there's a world inside your mind
and it wants you to find
a place for others,
without changing
the bookshelves
the music
or the way that you walk through the door.
It might be the means of replacing
the fear which stops you from living
and giving
and laughing
as yourself.

some nights fold in on themselves
after too many years and decades
spent emptying oneself for others

like old letters re-opened accusing
from where they'd been laid to rest
found in yellowing files and folders

debris stirring from the shadows
unsettles the window ledge dust
irritating the membranes of scent

as memory floods with questions
tagging along like curious children
squabbling about whose fault it was

that we sit writing with brimming eyes
with the kind of solitary regret and shock
that comes when bodies in a silent house

wander around aimlessly trying to fill time
with their pointless pursuits and blinded eyes
imagining just another hit from some website

will stave off stories of their past they shelved
for nights like this when the spectres return
to bring the bill from aged secrets banished

his days were few
when shadows came
to bring the tempest rains
to infiltrate a lad not even two

he learned to have a song inside
that danced and skipped along
no matter what that day
or night would hold

so when the sticks
arrived from monsters
with the thing that stood
and poked up right inside

the songs would play to quiet
the tearing pain that broke the door
where they would come to shove
themselves on toddler flesh

how long will he
with gentle life
be robbed
once more