the night before
the moon grew bold

I felt the darkness
move in from above
in ominous grey
opaque

it reached for me
half asleep, I
acquiesced

relinquished
pillowy clutch
splayed sheets
like legs

for his
chatter bones to chill
where my sallow
is tissue thin

his hail knuckles
affixed to wet tongue
drug me to the floor
raking my hollows
over and over

reeling terrors
on sepia filmstrip
some scenes repeating
some to-fro rewound forward
some hovered gory ending:

frigid tools cutting
to expose my insides
stirring entrail with bone
tugging ruddy strings
to see what sounds
they made as I
buckled; choked
on my leaks

I closed my eyes
tried to escape body
but he projected on
my shuttered
darting

knotting esophagus
around the backbone
fingerpainting my end
on worn flesh walls
in char-red spectrum
choreographed in
perfect harmony
with rote fear
chanting

this is how
you die -

alone

I felt it all
happening.

dangling my happy
memoirs with nooses
ungraceful reanimating
decayed draggy dancing
Xs where bright eyes
were once upon
and wide

open

every ache and
smothered secret
chirped by dark faeries
too quick to swat

but when all
the pushed down
were given mallets
they crescendoed
into discordant jarring
and in its peak came
a piercing shriek:

so loud -

all stilled
to look around

I couldn’t tell
if the voice
was him
or me

but after terror climaxed
the hear ripped and
grip released

I allowed myself
to loosen, breathe
headthrob slowly
melded into felt
beats:

limbs and tips
all pulsing
relief

and I
could see
no one was there

but me.

wielding expertly
book in my own hand
thick with tested maps

to exquisitely torture
every tenuous strand
in my fragility