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I have a horrible secret my 13-year-old best friend confided to me one day at school.
We were between class, and we had two minutes to sprint to our next class, as per the rule.
In opposite directions off course.

I did not hear anything the teacher said that day, 
I had wanted to hear my friend, not hear him drool, or look at his hair of fuzz.
He called on me once, and everyone laughed. I had no idea what the question was.
Leukemia? Cancer?  My mind was in overdrive.

After school I caught up with her right before she dove into her mother’s car.
What is it? I demanded, eyes big and wide.    “Not here,” she told me. “Maybe inside.”
I tried again after I climbed in the car, but she shook her head ‘no’, hushing me.
My mind was going haywire, with the things it could be. Drugs? Her?  Could not be.

I telephoned her the second I got inside my house.
What is it? I hollered.  “Are you okay?” I was thinking thief, convict, killer, by now.
My imagination was going absolutely a hundred percent berserk as only it knows how.

“I’m a…..”
I pressed my ear harder to the phone. A what?
“A sleepwalker,” she whispered.
I thought I had heard wrong.
A what?
“A sleepwalker,” she hissed. 
And I began to laugh.

Sleepwalking is so common in my family, we thought we had invented it.
We sometimes bump heads in our family before we wake up, and I told her this too.
“Sleep walking is nothing,” I shared. “Wait until you have what I have, then you can really boo hoo.
I’m a sleep fighter.”

Ever since I was little if anyone tried to pick me up and carry me to bed,
I would come up swinging fists, straight toward their head.
My dad got a black eye once, when I was about eight,
Because he tried to pick me up in full sleep mode. 
Mom tried to signal him, give him a code.
But by the time he caught on, he had a shiner from me.
I have been sleep fighting since the age of three.

We began laughing hysterically, my friend and I.
Sleepwalking is nothing when you are a sleep fighter.
If you do not believe me, you should give it a try.

Written July 19, 2018
Entered Sleepwalking Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: John Hamilton
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