Light spills from doorways and streetlamps
Reaching for you but always falling short.
You are alone in a pool of darkness
Windows yawning and empty.
Shards of glass glitter faintly,
Strewn in the dirt around you like stars orbiting a black hole.
Vines twist among the bricks
Digging into the intimate parts of you,
The cracks and weaknesses,
Prying back doors and invading your drainpipes and fire escapes.
Long since collapsed,
The roof hangs in shreds
Letting the night pour into you
Cool and unsettling
Like black water.
You are not empty
You are filled.
You hold what I hold.
Something different.
Something ancient.
Something cold.
Life creeps into you
Around you
Crawling, unseen, through the basements and shuttered rooms
Crumbling ancient paint so that it falls from the walls and ceilings
In sheets like heavy rain.
You are filled with deathly life
You are filled with
What cannot die,
What endures.
You are not a ruin, not to me.
You are a shrine to things lost
To moments of silence and suffering
You are an echo of the dark power that seeps up from the dirt and coils in my stomach
Whenever I step outside at night.
I press my palms to you:
Nourish me.
Feed me darkness
And I will feed you
Secrets.
Give me silence.
Give me peace.
Give me
Solidity.
Make me stone.