Last night I took the dogs out to “go to the bathroom” before bed.  I felt the familiar annoyance of the locks upon locks (three for the front door and grill gate) and keys on a bulking jumbled chain – two for this one door along with the garage and gate remote –and the extra feet to the kitchen to check if the alarm’s on (when any exterior door opens it goes off and Chubb security calls to ask for an “it’s alright” password).  There is too much time in the twists and fiddles of the opening and closing doors and locks; time to remind one of their purpose. 

They get into my sleep.  I dream so often of locks, doors left ajar, distances between doors, gaps in the security grate that a hand can reach through, running forever forward to another lock, another door.  All the while someone comes and there is never enough time.  My earliest dreams were like this also.  I’d like to imagine that they subsided for a time, when I was in safe places, in places without the alarm.  The locks of the safe haven door may not have been as vivid, but they were still there.  My body seemed to move in sand or mud and could never reach the threshold soon enough.  I awoke before it came, before the fear was realized.  The approaching terror was never as vivid as the open bolts, the doors I couldn’t close, the keys I couldn’t get a grip on, distinguish from one another and fit in a corresponding lock.  It doesn’t matter that the attack never comes.  The terror lies in the waiting, from fumbling around in darkness, from locks unable to fulfill their purpose.