Omens,
Warning signs and aching bones,
Dark clouds and distant thunder,
The house will fall tonight and take me with it,
Spill me into the street to wash away come rain,
I sit at the table, watching cracks form in the ceiling over bowed heads and quiet contemplation,
I feel myself lifted from the floor,
I am formless in the living room, transcribing conversations to my skin in dead languages, my body a desecrated temple of hieroglyphics nobody can read,
I am breathless in the bedroom, feeling the heat of passion on my skin and absorbing none of it, fault lines manifesting under my fingernails as I sink into someone else's tragedy,
I am weightless on the porch, dreaming of one day being swallowed by something monstrous enough to have me, swallowed by something monstrous enough to profane the sky with its arrogance and come out the other side steel, unbreakable, sharp and remorseless,
When I return to my body I am deathless - I am the unwelcome traveler of worlds, a ghost haunting my own life, these friends and lovers have been host to a parasite, a restless thing of no shape and no blood of its own,
I resolve to surrender to the coming storm,
As I rise, they fall one by one,
My brothers to their pride,
My friends to their rage,
My lovers to their desperation,
And as I walk out into the street, I am caught by flashes of lightning and moonlight, and I turn back to watch the house crumble, brick by brick, into the lonesome fog of forgetting