andrew williams

What Wretched Thing is This?

What wretched thing is this?
That creeps from the shadows of your mind
Pooling at the places where only
Bad dreams and forgotten ones still linger.
You can feel it rattling against your bones
Clamping your tongue, marrying your words to empty air,
Waiting to spring from the crimson cracks inside you
Preying on the small moments from breath
To breath, gnawing when you are most unguarded

What wretched thing is this?
That paints dusky circles beneath your eyes
Who takes the color from your skin so
That you are nothing more than a ghoul
Draugr dragged up from the tepid earth
Forced to suffer through some squelching torment
Of thousands of flesh sacks babbling innate nonsense,
Divorcing the idea of ever uttering anything other
Then a ruckus of falsehoods.

What wretched thing is this?
That waits in the corner of every mirror
That hides in the flaps of cardboard boxes
And the iced over joints in your body
And the periphery of your vision
Always holding onto you with rusted claws
But never in a place where you can grab it
Hold it, make it stop and scream and suffer.
This is the shadow behind every smile
This is the soul in every photo
This is the thing you can never be rid of
Just yet