Where were you, you little *******?
Where were you hiding
As I turned out the lights last night?

Were you in the closet as I came into the bedroom?
Did you seep like a flood
Across the floor in the darkness
Rising up the leg of the bed
And into my ears like liquid toxic waste?

Were you under the pillow
And as my fingers slid under there
Between the crisp, smooth layers of white cotton?
Did you coil about my fingers
And up my arm
To spread over my scalp
All fuming-acid corrosive?

Were you in under the folds
Of the welcoming, white-striped comforter
As we turned in after a perfectly pleasant day?
Waiting, still, in the dark
As I pulled the blankets up taught?
And just below my chin
As the cold sheets around me warmed
To stop the just-into-bed shivers?

Did you crawl up then as I dozed
And twist around my throat
To tighten slowly until I awoke in your grip?

Where ever you were hiding,
You got the drop on me.
You turned the tiny dim lights
That peek into the room at night
Into piercing lasers.

You amplified the tiniest odours
Into dizzying, eye-watering stenches.

You traded the rising-sun's rays
As they finally pierced the curtains
After my hours of sleepless discomfort
For a blasts of neutron-bomb radiation.

Worst of all
You stole the cool, soothing side of the pillow
Every time I managed to find it
Giving me instead a sickly, warm bundle of gorse.

Where were you, you little *******?
Where were you hiding?