Bunk Beds by C.L. Liedekev

When I was in second grade,
had bunk beds in Red Bank Run apartments. 
Thick wood my father built one Sunday 
closing out a bender on blackberry Schnapps. 
He carried that bar smell with, the dead leg of his nights
Every weekend. The easy word to say is scared.
The hard one love. 

Me in that bed, the lower bunk, 
Monster Manual in one hand, flashlight in true other. 
Downstairs screams drained up the stairs, 
memory melting into the ground and buried 
shovel deep. I never knew real dreams after 
the bed was done. Only dreams of ants.

In these dreams, everything is the same. 

My mother in hell-monkey mode. Father dipped in blood. 
Sister knee-deep in Styx and Spirit of Radio.
I am in the bed, and the ant is in the room. 
One giant ant and it expands. It’s thorax slowly pushing 
into me into the wall until I vanish. I am gone in Underoos.

The bunk bed kept everything simple,
Duplex of the hiding life, full of dreams of dying ants, of mothers
lost in their claws out attacks, lost in tunnel routes, 
Of sister’s legs wrapped around the Walkman’s grasp. 
And my father, sugar drunk, Phillips head in hand
Screwing everything up to make it right.

C.L. Liedekev is a writer/propagandist who lives in Conshohocken, PA. He attended most of his life and all of his college in New Jersey. His work has been published in Open Skies Quarterly, The Literatus, The Red Hibiscus, and Impspired.