Scary Movies

by Kim Addonizio

Today the cloud shapes are terrifying,  
and I keep expecting some enormous  
black-and-white B-movie Cyclops  
to appear at the edge of the horizon,

to come striding over the ocean  
and drag me from my kitchen  
to the deep cave that flickered  
into my young brain one Saturday

at the Baronet Theater where I sat helpless  
between my older brothers, pumped up  
on candy and horror—that cave,
the litter of human bones

gnawed on and flung toward the entrance,  
I can smell their stench as clearly
as the bacon fat from breakfast. This  
is how it feels to lose it—

not sanity, I mean, but whatever it is  
that helps you get up in the morning
and actually leave the house
on those days when it seems like death

in his brown uniform
is cruising his panel truck
of packages through your neighborhood.  
I think of a friend’s voice

on her answering machine—
Hi, I’m not here—
the morning of her funeral,  
the calls filling up the tape

and the mail still arriving,
and I feel as afraid as I was
after all those vampire movies  
when I’d come home and lie awake

all night, rigid in my bed,
unable to get up
even to pee because the undead  
were waiting underneath it;

if I so much as stuck a bare
foot out there in the unprotected air  
they’d grab me by the ankle and pull me  
under. And my parents said there was

nothing there, when I was older  
I would know better, and now  
they’re dead, and I’m older,  
and I know better.

Kim Addonizio, “Scary Movies” from What Is This Thing Called Love. Copyright © 2004 by Kim Addonizio.