The man under the bed <br />The man who has been there for years waiting <br />The man who waits for my floating bare foot <br />The man who is silent as dustballs riding the darkness <br />The man whose breath is the breathing of small white butterflies <br />The man whose breathing I hear when I pick up the phone <br />The man in the mirror whose breath blackens silver <br />The boneman in closets who rattles the mothballs <br />The man at the end of the end of the line <br /> <br />I met him tonight I always meet him <br />He stands in the amber air of a bar <br />When the shrimp curl like beckoning fingers <br />& ride through the air on their toothpick skewers <br />When the ice cracks & I am about to fall through <br />he arranges his face around its hollows <br />he opens his pupilless eyes at me <br />For years he has waited to drag me down <br />& now he tells me <br />he has only waited to take me home <br />We waltz through the street like death & the maiden <br />We float through the wall of the wall of my room <br /> <br />If he's my dream he will fold back into my body <br />His breath writes letters of mist on the glass of my cheeks <br />I wrap myself around him like the darkness <br />I breathe into his mouth <br />& make him real<br /><br />Erica Jong<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-man-under-the-bed/
