Bed springs digging, grappling metal fingers

Gouging in iron shreak

His weight a slender man of unfastening belt buckles

More metal

My skin, when velvet is brushed the wrong direction

No longer feels smooth

Disturbed

Yellow dishes, the smell of cheap heaters chuffing their exhaust

He is covering the air in kerosene

A tang of Chinese takeout, disguarded in the corner

Where potted plants and molding curtain tips go to die

Light doesn’t get in

His eyes eat hope as day is vanquished

A shadow crawling in my DNA

If I had grown fat with his child

I’d have cut it out with my own teeth

Her shape in the darkness is a star

Piercing my gloom

Streetlights flirt with fog outside

Stray dogs without homes howl

She says; I am the future, hold on

To this place ahead

Waiting for you to catch up

It may take twenty years or one

Slothing his stink off you with each Advent

Till he’s a puppet left in the cupboard of fear

Limp and collecting dust

Give it no power

Over you

And the twilight of your journey

Lain before you like molten lava

The pulse of something surging from within the earth

He turns, metal in his false smile, as you run out the room

Cold bathrooms with mildewed flannel towels damp in sympathy

His limp face and erect impotence, shared with shadows

He cannot catch you, this kerosene man, he is all char and ash

Whilst you, you have been reminded why you want to live

Barefoot, you run, you run until you cannot feel the hard ground beneath you.