I never quite figured out why he was always there,
lingering just beyond the light’s reach.
Whispering words I could never understand
though I don’t believe they were for me to hear anyway.
Rarely, I’d catch a coherent word tumble from his lips
‘Alone’, ‘worthless’ and ‘disgusting’ were most common.
It wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before.

Sometimes I‘d find myself telling him about my day,
rambling on and on about things that didn’t matter.
Though he’d never respond to me,
he never seemed disinterested.
Some days the things I said to him
were the only words I’d speak at all.
He was there for me when no one else was.

One day, I asked if I could see his face.
He’d pondered for a long, silent moment
before stepping past the line between light and dark.
The sun almost dripped down his seemingly macabre form.
He wasn’t displeased by my curiosity,
But I could tell he was off-set by being beyond the shadows.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see,
but nothing could’ve prepared me for the soulless,
hollow eyes that seemed to sink deeper
into the foul-faced creature behind them.
His presence seeped a feeling of desolation
that solidified in the cracks between my bones
and atrophied the surrounding muscles.

Staring into the solemn being stood before me,
I’d felt a heaviness settle on my shoulders.
The weight left me gasping, choking from lack of air.
When he realized what he’d done his face distorted
into one of genuine regret and sorrow.
He reached out to console me but quickly recoiled
as if remembering who he was, and why he was truly there.

How could I have told him that I’d wished
he’d have grabbed me anyway?
Pulled me into the melancholy embrace of his arms.
Or how I’d longed for the darkness he bore
to swallow me whole.
Why would I jeopardize the only one who cared for me?