From the blue black alley of my worst night terror, you reappear.

I wake, sweating a gauzy film of so many lost years.

You were that nightmare I never wanted to wake up from.

I was your stolen piece of fiction,
You plagiarized my youth,
Writing your own broken inventions
Into the fabric of my innocence;
You ripped my seams
Until I was your blank canvas.

But as you came tearing your way up that alley I realized,
I've been rewriting history,
stitching together a past with crooked seams.

Because every nightmare begins with:

eyes closing,

breath slowing,

the sandman whispering,
"Sweet dreams."

You were not always a monster.