The ringing of a telephone
A simple knock when I’m alone.
Someone just calling my name
And screaming seem the same.
A loud noise when I am sleeping,
Someone throwing open my door,
A car backfiring close by home,
The sounds of steps across the floor.

These are the normal sounds
The symphony of people living.
These sounds don’t normally
Carry terror along with the giving
Like someone living in a war zone
A place with mass invading troops.
They are isolated common things
Unless they arrive in huge groups.

Yet these things still bring me
A painful pounding in my heart
And it goes on for too long
From the moment it starts.
It is the gift of abandonment
Of childhood neglect and abuse
And is viewed by most adults
As ridiculous and abstruse.

But many survivors of childhood
Of threat and pain and fear
Will tell you the horror remains
After the passage of many years.
It has to do with the inner self
Being robbed of a basic trust
Of life itself by their care givers,
By God himself, if you must.

Because there feels a solid knowing
That truly, deep inside the child
There is nobody to save them
From creatures near and wild.
Nobody will come to rescue us
When the bad things come to bite
And everybody knows they come
In the deepest part of the night.