there is a festering wound you do not touch.
it sits here, dormant, at the edge of shallow breaths.
sometimes I’ll draw the curtains
and feel it’s cold throbbing in the darkness
against my chest,
pumping a stampede under my skin;
sometimes that howl and wail
drives my blades up to the walls -
those plaster membranes,
crumbling membranes,
pulsating
till it echoes a crawl.

it waits most days by that crack in the door,
for that shadow on the floor to grow fonder.

nothing will pull me from this sleep.