I knew of a boogey man in my neighborhood, a crooked little frozen mouse-eyed gentleman if you believed the accounts and reenactments of the older boys in Judas Priest tees. Once, this subdivision was a farm, and once the dead tree just past the border was a good tree for climbing, but a boy fell. Slowly died, so slow he still had life in his eyes when the scavengers arrived.
One night I would visit dead tree and piously wait, and if the clouds were just right the boogey man would announce his real-life identity with a cracking shuffle in the shadows.
I would clutch the knife in my hand to defend myself and vanquish his hell from the cul-de-sac and when he came for me
I would bargain for reflex and observation but the knife is a comb
it's the one my older cousin put in my stocking last year
he's in the air force now
the boogey man's quick sharp feet dance all up and down my skin and he knows how to grab the moon
he brings the moon crashing down
on my head shattering like a fluorescent tube shatters
the shrapnel hits me
enters me there's no pain at all
a sort of fleeting rush
I'd chase it forever, my fumbling adulthood
There I'd meet it and fall into the fir tree in the median the neighbor family dresses up yearly in multi-colored strands of lights.