I lay in bed, as tired as the warm summer evening.

All it takes is a sound and a cascade of fear sets in. 

It might be nothing, it might be the next door neighbor.

I run over, just in case, to make sure the back door is locked. 

Then I lock the front door. Bolt it twice. 

Then I lock the door that led to the long hallway, 

with the ‘Kahlo Blue’ walls filled with drawings and family portraits. 

Moving in a rush, as if I was running away from something. 

I go through these motions, trying to tell myself ‘it’s all in your head’.

I walk through that tunnel of ancestral lines, voices whispering ‘you’re safe’.

Then I lock the last door to the bedroom, where I’m no longer free. 

I lay back down, trying to steady my breath, to settle my racing heart. 

Trying not to think of this little movie that starts playing in my head. 

This little movie that says ‘bad things can happen’ and you know it.

You know it in the thin porous layer of your brown skin. 

You know it in the depth and the chills that your bones feel. 

You know it in the faces that you see, close and so real, even if slightly blurred by time. 

Two decades have passed and this trigger lives quietly inside.

An animal that naps under the shade of the tree, until something pokes it awake.