Distant cries on cheery nights;
That ever-growing sense of creeping destruction
When all is well
When all is too pleasant.

It rises from the hearth on chilly days
Like fiery remembrances of past decays
As pain found its way
From comforting warmth
To a slowly sizzling burn,
And the heat of water turned to rot
On ceilings lost to decades of neglect.

It is fleeting eyes and unsteady hands
During summer weeks
Of seemingly nonchalant song and dance
Where the next step
The next breath
The next laugh
May be the last.

And no hand upon the skin
Can calm the quaking of the heart
Inside it’s cage of tectonic plates
As it sings loudly to drown out
The reverberations of fate.

It is the vicious fear.

And it makes every hour of open eyes
And every dream under the dark sky
Another deadly parade of
Who, what, when and where
As the living pretend
To be alive.