It is in the too small house with its too big furniture,
and it is on the bus where I sit and the train where I stand.
It follows me around; a thick grey smoke of nothingness.
Some days it is consuming, swallows me, envelops me in its arms
in a hug that feels like suffocation. I suffocate, hushed.
It is there when I stand in the bathroom cubicle, cold,
empty and alone. It is behind me like the puppeteer and here
I stand, the delicate marionette with her oh so fragile
limits of flesh and skin, real and alive and crying for mercy.

I cannot change it, though I wish it would leave me at peace,
but instead, it takes its bitter time and through its fingers,
my own sanity falls like sea-green sand. In the mornings
I wake up heavy; it is lying on top of me, and all my effort
goes into getting up. Suffering, every day the same as yesterday
as the people who surround me wonder, what it is?
She is loud in her questioning; unforgiving, with the aftermath
of a nuclear leak, invisible and deadly and ever so toxic.

She takes a distinct dislike to it, but it channels itself through
my own body, my own spirit and soul. I am the marionette;
all strings attached. And so She turns on me with Her beady
eagle eyes that watch everything I do, and in her head, She
makes Her judgements. Her divine judgements, Her divine rulings.
It taunts Her, and She feels it and rejects its presence because once,
it was a part of Her. It holds me in its arms and tells me
all the ugly in the world, and all its evils. I want to be held
by something, and so I let it. But Her anger is plentiful, crimson.

I am often alone with it. It helps me think of all the small things,
and all the bigger things too. It opens avenues in my mind,
dangerous avenues, avenues of death and ways to bring it about.
It is there when I am alone in bed. It is there in the day and all day
it shadows me and plagues me and haunts me and it scares
away the people who dare come near, but it holds me with love
like a mother should hold Her child, with its’ tender embrace.
And I crave that touch, the vestigial happiness I feel in it despite
the fact its fingers touch me with coldness and nothing else.

She is growing agitated with its presence. I wish it would leave,
leave me alone and leave me be; but it stays, clings.
It wants something from me, that I cannot give,
it longs for my death and I begin to long for it too for it is powerful
in its persuasion. I am blamed for its shortcomings and She,
unsettled, stands with hatred for it. I know they have history,
for it whispers me tales of truth in my dreams,
far from sweet as they are, bittered and calloused by knowledge.

It grows stronger within me and as it waxes, I wane.
The singing stops one day, eating the next, holing up alone is now
not undesirable, but a wish. I wish that everything could stop.
It is still not content, taking more and more of me away;
She is discontented – Her old vices do claim – and out She takes
that anger and discontentment unto me. It eggs her on.
It fills me with emptiness and Her with blame.
But when She said that the quiet was because of me,
She was ignorant to the silence that followed Her.