Echoes of the Mind
by Dawg
In the skeletal hush where darkness plots,
consciousness unfurls beneath phantom hands–
neural corridors flicker with dread,
mapping a geography of wounds time cannot withstand.
The mind, a winding maze of old betrayals and unspoken names, sits exposed
to the slow, predatory drip of memory,
to the hiss of what was banished but never decomposed.
Nightmares, hooded and relentless, slither beneath the bone and nest in synapse,
their wordless screams vibrating in the marrow, warping every passing lapse.
No daylight reaches here, no comfort of reason or gentle hand;
only the whispered taunt of shadow, only the cold command
of unfinished grief–spectral, insistent, refusing to yield or fade,
etching doubt on the surface of waking hours,
pressing madness into every thought delayed.
Between the ticking of a clock and the tightening grip of midnight’s hold,
phantom voices seed hallucinations,
blurring what is remembered and what is told.
Sanity splinters under the pressure of these revenant guests,
each new vision another trespass, another test.
Ghosts of regret and panic prowl the cortex,
their icy touch electrifies nerves, turns resolve to wrecks.
In every panic, a whisper; in every silence, a scream–
specters gnawing at thought, unraveling hope and dream.
The mind’s defenses erode, and the self slips between–
lost in a maze of haunted recollection, haunted by what has been.
Within the crypt of consciousness, the mind is gutted open by invisible claws,
each secret kept becomes a parasite, gnawing from within,
rewriting every law of reason and refuge.
Darkness gorges itself on doubts that multiply like rot–
thoughts are flayed, not forgotten, and even hope is strangled in its cot.
Somewhere between agony and annihilation, the mind claws for release,
but each wound is a door, each scar a lease
signed in shadow, inked in fright.
Here, in the forever dusk of fractured thought,
every scar tells a story, every echo a battle never fought.
The haunted mind holds vigil, endlessly pursued
by the ghosts it cannot bury,
and the sorrow it cannot elude.
For in the crypt of consciousness, where all true darkness breeds,
every echo is a demon, and every thought–a seed.