exercising demons, pt. 3-- night terrors

In the museum basement there is a glass
case with a handwritten note
“Please keep fingers off the glass, Management”
a smiling face
dots the end of it

in the room with the mummies
and shriveled lips, pickled fetuses in jars,

inside this case is where they keep her--

they say she has slept since birth

her eyeballs toss back and forth,
back and forth, under thin-skin sheets:
eyelids the only movement in a still room

her hair has grown to the floor

above eyelids that flicker like
faulty connections,
the wood-grain smudge of her fingerprints
thicken the glass from the inside

sometimes she must wake up and want out

the guard rubs his bald head

when I ask,

tells me, “at night, you
should hear it—how weeping
fills an empty hallway”