After I slept in Mama and Daddy's bed
the one she and Daddy slept in for more than 60 years —
she had been sleeping in the room that was mine,
she would tell me the reason tomorrow.
So I slept in their room, in their bed.
Mama told me she woke up in the middle of the night,
felt Daddy next to her though he'd been dead seven years,
he was talking to her, his mouth was silent but moving,
he leaned over her, his eyes blacked out in the dark.
She told me all of that after I slept so well in their bed.
Mama told me that seeing Daddy didn't scare her,
but made her dread bedtime and caused strange dreams,
he showed up again and again, every few nights,
he kept at her all through the night, kept her awake for hours.
She told me all of that after I slept so well in their bed.
Mama told me when she woke up the last night in that bed,
she felt him walking across her feet, up her legs —
she told me all that had happened in that room,
she told me she should forgive him and forget but couldn't.
After she told me all of that, after I had slept so well in their bed,
I slept in their room and in their bed again, and I felt everything.
he touched my head with searching hands
heat pulsing like an aura across skin
he entered me — a seeker, a healer, a medium
pushing through skin, journeying into blood and memory
my brain a tangled story of father, mother, then, now,
loss and ache embedded in tissues, cells, synapses
in those spaces inside, in the dark, dark darkness
I felt him reaching, finding, seeing, knowing
afterwards, he said I burned his hands,
offered a prayer for forgiving parents,
but the prayer was all about me
Daun Daemon’s stories and poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Typehouse Literary Review, Remington Review, Into the Void, and other journals. Daemon is currently at work on a memoir in poetry. She teaches scientific communication at North Carolina State University and lives in Raleigh with her husband and four cats.