Shadowed

Prose Poetry

        Your neck twists against the cotton of your pillow. You lie in silence so dark you hear feathers sigh. The air is still and reeks of decay. You’ve been lying here a while, as you have many nights before; the odour has curled through your veins and burned itself into your skin. You’re not wanted elsewhere.

        Shadows melt your walls, spill across piles of clothing, smother the moon’s glare. They twist in the folds of your curtain, drag them by their skirts; swallow the glimmer of your medals, the shine from your teddy bear’s eyes. They distort the faces in your family portrait, darken the stare of a younger you, who bares her teeth in scorn at the brittle husk of you now. With each whisper of faraway wind, shadows creep closer to your toes.

        Your sheets are corpses of your childhood dresses, scratchy fabrics to match your button eyes. ticky plastic like your mother’s hug against your disintegrating form. You have yet to tell her you are outgrowing them. She never soothed your fear of the dark, and you are too far gone now. You think you can blame the dark for your twistedness.

        You’ve felt me, haven’t you?

        I’ve slithered slick and silent through your synapses, carved at your thoughts with jagged teeth. I’ve gnawed at the lining of your memories, clawed them clean and bare, spit out the bits I don’t need. I’ve massaged cracks into your consciousness, dripping black into its fissures, thickening, hardening, until I sealed myself inside.

        “I could touch you now,” I rasp, my breath chilling the air around your naked wrists. “Run my fingers through your hair. Press them to your throat.”

        You huff through clenched teeth, scrunching your brows against throbbing eyelids, wrestling their twitches, willing them to blind you. I laugh soft and dark.

        “Stop pretending,” I murmur. “Will you scream for me? Will you beg?”

        Each roll of your eyeballs curls me into your sockets; I squirm in their nests, milking a flood of tears. “You won’t,” I whisper. “You’re too much of a coward.”

        “You monster!” you screech.

        I cackle. “Am I?”

        My voice coils around your throat. I want to draw desperation from your raw trembling breath. I want to lap up your terror, watch your lips quiver as sweat pools in your follicles, slithers along your hairline and teases your jaw. I want to feel dark red leak from your pallid skin, slip into your flesh, and rot you to your bones.

        “Let me go,” you croak.

        “Go where?” I sing. “I’m all you’ve ever had. Aren’t you tired of lying here trying to think your way out of this? Go on, shout! Scream. Curse me out!

        But we both know the truth: You’ve been fighting yourself all along—and losing.”