Haunting Whispers

Night lingers in the corners like a secret nurse, swabbing down the wounds that never really close,
While the ceiling cracks pulse overhead–veins of old regret, feeding every anxious dose.
Sleep hovers just out of reach, a drunk lover threatening to call but never dialing,
And shadows pull up chairs, cross their legs, ready to watch another evening’s unraveling, smiling.
Those whispers–thin as old receipts, sharp as a drawerful of knives gone unused–
Weave their cautionary tales, draping them over the heart like a lead-stitched shroud, refusing to be refused.
Their stories bloom in the stagnant air, feeding on half-remembered slights, kitchen-sink humiliations,
Conjuring lost faces, old debts, the ways things could have been if only, if only–recitations.
Every hour leaks from the battered clock with the rhythm of a distant execution drum,
And the whispers multiply–offering bargains, threats, riddles, all designed to unmake what I’ve become.

Rationality is a broken bulb in this night–each attempt at logic shorting out, flickering, dying,
While the mind is left pacing an endless cell, picking the locks with memory’s splinters, trying.
The ghosts are patient; they wait, wearing my voice, rehearsing their lines for tomorrow’s daylight hours,
But tonight, their power is absolute, their reign fueled by insomnia’s cold, unblinking flowers.
No hand reaches from the gloom, no rescuer slips in through the crack beneath the door–
Just the chorus of regret, each voice singing one true note: you could have been so much more.
Still, even as dread leans in, breath moist and bitter at the nape of my neck,
There’s a pulse beneath the fear, a small animal heat that refuses to break.
Dawn is a rumor, a promise made by fools, but every time it comes, it proves the whispers wrong–
And for a few bold minutes, all the ghosts are gone, until the next night, the next cruel song.