My Knight Without Armor

For seven years
every night
I dreamed the same dream.

At first
I welcomed sleep,
waiting for the ending
I prayed would change.

But I remained
on the bottom floor
of the witch’s house.

The roof was freedom.
The knight waited there—
always outside,
never entering.

When I finally reached
the second floor,
halfway to escape,
the witch would pull me back
into the dark.

I learned to fear sleep.

The first of the three sisters
escaped to college—
her own private hell
hidden inside
a third-family life.
Now she stands beside the witch,
stirring the same pot.

My closest sister,
the one who suffered most,
was thrown away.
She had been my Pooh—
opening the closet
to prove the monsters
were only wood grain,
winding the talking monkey
who promised
we would see
all the wild children
at the zoo.

She could not save me.
She was trying
to survive herself.

I saw my knight
only sometimes.
I clung to him
until he had to push me away.
A child’s tantrum
in my grandmother’s house—
rejection,
misread as abandonment.

In upstate New York
after tuna fish sandwiches
I thought
this was the moment.
I held on again.
I was pulled back.

The dungeon closed.

The dreams stopped
only when hope did—
when I understood
my knight had no armor
because he never knew
what was happening
in the house he left
before I was three.

I kept holding on to the idea
of rescue
until 1980,
when a different knight
arrived wearing full armor,
lifting me out
of the witch’s house
and becoming
my shield.
He turned out
to be my Prince Charming.

At great personal cost
he faced the witch
without becoming one,
held a shield
when I had none,
and called me
out of the story
that was never mine.

He reminds me
that a mother’s love—
even broken,
even distorted by illness—
is still a sacred thing,

but sacred
does not mean
I must live
under the spell.