Morning polish on my teeth,
my skin pulled tight, a hollow mannequin grin,
Cards on the table, cards in my pocket,
little white tombstones stacked with names I want to watch go still again.
I’ve been holding still beneath you since before you knew to be afraid,
Patient in the cold and dark,
resting in the nothing that I’ve made,
You’ve been stepping over me since you could barely clear the floor—
The bed monster was waiting then and the bed monster waits more.
They only see the haircut, not the hammer in my head,
They hear my harmless laughter, not the marching of their dead.
Every creak and groan of the settling house is me adjusting to your weight,
Every shadow on the ceiling is me calibrating, holding straight.
I am the cold thing just below the edge of where you sleep,
The childhood fear you told yourself you’d outgrown
but still keep,
You pull the covers to your chin like cotton stops the cold—
The bed monster is ageless, getting darker, getting old.
I smile for the body count no one else can see,
Every joke they crack just sharpens something restless inside me,
I walk through crowds like a wolf in a rented human skin,
Shaking hands, taking notes,
plotting how and where and when it all caves in.
Restaurant candles flicker on her lips while my thoughts draw chalk lines under her chair
and down the hallway floor,
She talks about charity, galleries, love,
I picture soundproof walls
and a polished axe resting by the bedroom door.
You’ve got a mortgage and a rational explanation for the dark,
You’ve told yourself the fear dissolved somewhere between then
and now’s mark,
But the hand is always there below the mattress in the black—
The bed monster never got the message that you weren’t coming back.
My hand brushes hers, she thinks romance,
I think pressure on a throat, red mist in my private lore,
Waiter pours wine, I picture it thicker, heavier, running along tile,
matching the stain in my head that always wants more.
They toast to bright futures while I hum along off key,
Inside I see their endings, and it feels like home to me.
You reach for the lamp with the same desperate lunge as
when you were eight—
The bed monster is patient and the bed monster can wait.
I am the cold thing just below the edge of where you sleep,
The childhood fear you told yourself you’d outgrown
but still keep,
You pull the covers to your chin like cotton stops the cold—
The bed monster is ageless, getting darker, getting old.
I smile for the body count no one else can see,
They clap for my promotion while my pulse writes violent stories,
I move through glass
and concrete like a knife beneath their skin,
Perfect suit, perfect tie, perfect lunatic within.
Late night stereo up too loud, plastic on the floor in my imagination,
rain on the window like a metronome of dread,
I dance with ghosts that wear their business suits,
humming along to pop songs while I picture every swing inside my head.
In the bathroom mirror my reflection flickers,
one side saint in Armani, one side devil in blood red—
Beneath your frame, I lick the dust,
I feel your heartbeat in the bed.
Maybe I am nothing but teeth, hair,
and hunger with a credit card and a plan,
Maybe every heartbeat is a countdown written in marker on the back of my hand,
So sleep if you can manage it, keep your legs inside the line,
The space beneath the mattress is exclusively
and permanently mine.
If the mask hits the floor and the real one stays,
no one walks out of this clean,
All that shine, all that charm,
all that murder washing through a human machine.
Morning comes, the light returns, you’ll call it just a dream—
The bed monster accepts your disbelief;
it’s sweeter in the screams.
I smile for the body count no one else can see,
I am the cold thing just below the edge of where you sleep,
Every joke they crack just sharpens something restless inside me,
The childhood fear you told yourself you’d outgrown
but still keep.
I walk through crowds like a wolf in a rented human skin,
You pull the covers to your chin like cotton stops the cold—
Shaking hands, taking notes,
waiting for the night I finally let him in,
The bed monster is ageless, getting darker, getting old.
They toast to bright futures while I hum along off key,
Under your bed, inside my head—
It feels like home to me.