I Know It's Secret... Poem by Crystal Johnson

As I lie awake in bed,
I see the shadows that are on my wall.
Shaped like faces, and human bodies.
I can swear that I hear someone talking to me,
Almost in an aggressive tone,
Threatening me with things I don’t quite understand.
I can sense something, or someone near me.
A presence too strong to go unnoticed,
I can’t help but be frightened.
You may call me crazy,
You may call me foolish,
But I know that something is there.
I prepare myself for it to jump out at me.
I pull the covers over my head as a child would.
For some reason there’s always a feeling of security under the intense layers of the fabric.
I am almost positive that there is something in my closet,
Something under my bed,
Something in the corner.
I tightly close my eyes,
Thinking that maybe if I pretend that this isn’t real, it will go away.
Oh, but it never goes away.
These images and paranoia will never leave me alone.
Forever they will continue to haunt me.
I have no choice but to force my eyes open and face what’s to come.
You may call it, “Being scared of the “Boogie Man”,
But it is far more than that.
It’s not a made up story of a childhood monster,
It’s not a nightmare you get from watching a horror movie.
This is real to me.
This is not wanting to be alone in the dark for reasons only I would understand.
This is the constant terror of being left unaccompanied for the shadows to get me.
This is the continuous panic I get every time the light is turned out.
In the dark is where everything is exposed,
Bare,
Out in the open.
This is where anything could happen,
But you would never notice.
You have gotten so comfortable being in the darkness.
In fact, it’s the darkness that brings you ease and relaxation.
But I wouldn’t be so composed if I were you.
The darkness is where things always happen,
But always go unseen.
You think that the dark is so simple and discreet,
But I know of the secrets it hides…