Every night when his parents fell into dream

Land, the boy crept through the house

And into the bathroom.  The tears

Dampened his cheeks and he prayed his secrets

Would remain hidden until the next time his shadow

Stole into the moonlit room.

 

The tiles that covered the entire room

Were cold at the touch and made him dream

Of his warm bed.  But the boy was a shadow

And he belonged in this crumbling house

Full of broken secrets,

Unending despair and the tears

 

That threatened to drown him every day.  His tears

Were only visible inside this room.

Crying in public warned them of his secrets

And they could make even his happiest dream-

A small girl and her fathers running around a warm house-

Seem like the darkest pit of hell filled with menacing shadows.

 

He rummaged through the medicine cabinet, his shadow

Bouncing off the walls and dripping like tears

Onto the ground floor of the collapsing house.

The bottle he was searching so frantically for fell into the room’s

Cold, white sink and he swore softly, seeing his dream

Dissolve into a lost secret.

 

It was floating amid his many other secrets

That could only be let out when hidden by the shadows

In this room.  He dreamed

Of the day when they wouldn’t cause tears

To stream down his face.  There would be no room

For error this time.  This awful house

 

Would be the last place he saw.  The house

That held the pills that would make him forget his secrets.

They would be forever absorbed into the tiles of the dim room.

The pills spilled into his hand and the shadows

Shook with memories of the dry tears

He shed as his once whole body became but a dream.

 

The house whimpered as it watched him become a mere shadow

And it vowed to keep his secrets and dried tears

Within the lightening room until the world escaped its dream.