Poems

The Night Light Confession I kept the night light on until I was twelveNot because I was afraid of the darkBut because of what the dark showed meWhen the light went out Shapes in the corner that had weightShadows that breathed independentlyThe closet door opening three inchesEvery single night at 2 AM My parents said […]

The Mirror at Three I wake at 3 AM from dreams I can’t remember feeling watchedStumble to the bathroom half-asleep turn on the light and stopThe face looking back isn’t mine the features are all wrongSomeone else is wearing my reflectionand they’ve been there all alongSame build same height same everything except the eyes are

The Mirror’s Curse The first time the Thompson family brought the mirror into their home, the air shifted–a subtle but unmistakable change, as if the house itself drew a deep, wary breath. The antique, procured from an estate auction notorious for its haunted relics,was the sort of artifact that seemed to watch rather than be

The Memory Shared You tucked a laugh beneath your breath,then let it loose like contraband lightI held it up against my bad days,and watched it win without a fightYour fingertips wrote tiny truce notes on the knuckles of my handAnd I learned devotion can look casual,then hit like a one-man bandWe weren’t built for tidy

The Midnight Slasher A shadow creeps along the path unseenA figure cloaked in darkness,with a knife that glimmers with a deadly sheen The campers sleep unaware of the fate that lies just steps awayTheir dreams of summer days turn into nightmares by the break of day Blood stains the forest floor,a silent scream that echoes

The Long Wait The long wait is not the passive and the simply endured,The long wait is the strategic and the calculated and the cured,Of any impulsive action by the cold and by the clear,And the long wait is the inventory of the fury and the year. Every year of the long wait was a

The Memorial Service They held it in the church he never attendedand said the things that church attendance would imply,and everyone who showed up comprehendedthe gap between the ceremony and the guywho’d spent his weekend mornings fixing enginesand reading box scores on the front porch until noon.But the ritual needs its religious regionsand so we

The Last Thing They Said She said she loved the weather this specific seasonhe said he would call me back before the week was throughthey said goodbye at airports, exits, parking lotsand did not know that was the last goodbye they would use I think about the ordinariness of final wordshow nobody announces that the

The Legend They Remembered I did not set out to be memorable, I set out to be right,Did not want the whole crowd chantingwhen I walked into the light,I just wanted the position and the leverage and the deal,But apparently the combination has a certain kind of appeal. They remember people who move fast and

The Long Surrender He didn’t wave a white flag — the surrender was quieter,the laying down of arms in the specific interiorof a man who fought himself for forty years and finally tired —the long surrender isn’t cowardice, it’s how the fire expired. The fights were all internal — the arguments of wantagainst the arguments