17 of my roommates gone

17 rooms, it's true

Everyone's gone, me too

Then who's here? Who are you?

I'm the one here to rekindle your memories of fear as a child
You know, you remember that phase

No, no

But I wonder, how deep is normal?

No please go

We were all afraid of the dark,
Perhaps long hallways,
And the fact remains that some windows were unkindlier than others.

I'm a person who seeks solace in the forest dark and cold

But I'm remembering,
I'm remembering

As a child,
This recurring nightmare

Wake up to find myself not where I slept,
Not by my mom
But in my own room, alone
From the dimly lit kitchen comes sounds of muffled laughing, glasses clicking
I begin to run but the ground
The ground tilts sideways
The floorboards, creaking up

As the floor rose I'd try to crawl
I could never reach the light of the kitchen
My tiny body would scream and cry, looking behind me every so and so
At that darkness brooding

And when I woke up I could not move at all
Paralyzed in fear!
How scared does one have to be to lie like that for hours?

And how possibly could a mere object be so utterly abhorrent?
The window, its latches, the louvre outside
I don't know how, or why, but I did know that the window bade me ill will. Maybe I'd killed his children, or tortured it with a glass cutter.
I did like to take my time with things.

Washing my hands, trembling, I hold out four fingers. Because little me knew that to hold three would be to denounce myself wholly!
Four was good, three was bad. The window saw. It knew when I added one.
I was a bad child, a bad child.

The depth of this fear was so odd!
I guess I should tell you about the nightmare.
During those nights I lay perfectly putrid, my thoughts were with the mountain men that could will their heart to stop.

Me, a mere child, not knowing what death was, trying to cease that tiny beat.
How peculiar.

And sometimes I'd speak to my father through the vents,
Once he was the ceiling talking
Or the black and white lines in that broken TV channel

17 of my roommates gone

17 rooms, it's true

And now this is so weird
For I remembered this just now

And I don't know what else I've forgotten
But I don't think I want to know

Do you?

Perhaps you can find out in secret
And then tell me slowly, in a song light and airy
While we snap our fingers to tune.