Pendulum’s Promise
by Dawg
The clock in the hall is a crooked judge,
swinging its verdict over sleepless skin,
the pendulum’s arc slicing midnight into halves–
one for fear, one for regret, both for the condemned.
No redemption in the hush, just the slow groan of old wood
remembering who’s been lost,
every swing a reckoning, the past returning,
the present refusing to forget.
Time drips from the ceiling in thick, unseen threads,
each second a wound that won’t close,
shadows clutch at the corners,
bending with every shift of the moon’s cold stare–
a moon that promises nothing but more hours to endure,
more secrets to choke on.
The air in the room is bruised with memory,
haunted by promises that curdled on lips,
each tick a needle stitching dread along the inside of my chest,
threading through every story I never finished.
Some nights, the house groans beneath the weight of unfinished business,
floorboards sighing with each pass,
the pendulum dragging hours behind it like shackles,
demanding I account for what I ran from.
Sometimes, I see the shape of her in the window’s reflection,
a flicker of hair, the hint of a smirk,
a reminder that the worst haunts are the ones we made ourselves–
no exorcism for memories that sleep in your sheets,
no priest for the ache that crawls up your thighs.
Moonlight bleeds through torn curtains,
painting the walls in the faded colors of arguments we never finished,
the house holding its breath, the air sharp as a blade,
each shadow another reason to stay awake.
Every room is thick with what-ifs and almosts,
the air swollen with things unsaid,
the clock’s swinging heart tracing circles around desire,
absence, the animal need for absolution.
The sun comes up gray, apologetic, slipping through cracks in the wood,
but the promise remains,
the clock unwinding its old threats with every new day.
All the years, all the bodies,
all the fucked-up prayers and midnight confessions,
all weighed and measured beneath the watchful swing,
and I, left here, haunted and hungry,
learning to call this shadowed ground my own.
In the end, every promise is a haunting–
every hour a confession–every tick a dare,
and the pendulum, swinging through the gloom,
offers nothing but the truth:
that none of us walk away untouched,
that every heart carries a ghost,
and every night, beneath the moon’s unblinking eye,
we choose whether to keep running from the shadows,
or to hold them close,
and let the pendulum decide what we become.