full moon
The night descending
took me with it
into the long row, laid open
like a wound in the earth.
I wished to plant myself
within it, and knelt,
craving the coolness,
but then
the moon came peeking
round the corner of a cloud,
full and round as a belly,
and deep in me old hungers arose,
and with them the fear:
Must I always hunger?
Will I always be torn apart
by the cloak of flesh I wear
and the devil within?
I fear the night
not for its darkness,
but for leaving me alone with myself.
unleashed
It was all a dream:
the scrabbling at midnight,
three long scratches
on the glass, the crack along the frame
where the lock once was,
the splinters on the floor
next to his tracks.
It was all a dream:
the skittering along the floorboards
suddenly stilled at my footstep,
then rising in the walls to a fever pitch
until the paint crackled
and peeled back
before a million slender legs.
It was all a dream:
the rising shadow in the corner,
the tall one with holes for eyes
and long fingers pointing
at my children in their beds,
the widening grin, stiff and creaky
and rotating like a wheel.
It was all a dream:
the house emptied
of anything precious
except a single figure
weeping in the dark,
sinking slowly down
into the dark.
If only
I could
wake
up.
of the soul
For this one long night
Evil has its say,
Speaking
from borrowed lips
in a purloined tongue.
little light of mine
The merry scrape echoed
as the candle was lit
in the other room,
and my mother’s face hovered
with it into ours,
covering the cowering
with a blanket of light.
We huddled then,
together, pooling our little flames
into larger beams,
to wait out the night,
hoping
to be swallowed up
by dawn.