My Worst Fear

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My Worst Fear
By Andrea L. Alterman

As a child I was afraid of dying
in my sleep from nightmares
that scared me with their bleeding
into my daily life that now I don't
recall which was life and which
was dream,

it was my wish,
when I was eight, to die a painless
death, one in which my father
would hit me once so hard
my body would hurt and then
stop moving, and he'd be sorry,
and he'd tell me of his sorrow,
and I'd be dead,

the way I was
in those nightmares that played
out on the screen of my sleep
until I woke myself up, screaming,
sweating up my bedsheets and
ripping them in my fierce frenzy
to be freed from their wrapping
round my legs and stomach,

but no one told me
how nightmares can swallow reality,
like the pick up sticks I played them
every day, hoping that one
night I'd have been good enough
to get a dream I could die for.