Poems

Winter-Night Miracles With Their Teeth Out [Wraith]Snow comes down quiet as an apology nobody quite means, drifting sideways through the dark like ash off a tired god’s cigarette,Stacking soft on rust-bit cars and crooked mailboxes, clinging to busted chain-link like it wants to make every bad decision look poetic, at least for a minute, till […]

We Never Took the Lights Down [Wreath]By March the snowbanks have collapsed into exhausted gray piles along the curb,the kind of sad, crusted scraps that look like they gave up on being magical sometime around mid-January,but the string lights still cling to the eaves of this crooked little rental,looped like a half-remembered promise we never

When Hell Counts Down to Nothing [Wraith]The clocks in hell still bother ticking, big iron faces bolted into black stone walls that sweat heat and old sin,Rusty hands dragging through scorched numerals, grinding their way toward midnight like a slow-motion guillotine over every foolish wish and every worn-out grin.No ball drop here, no glittering skyline,

Twenty-Four Little Hells Behind Cardboard Doors [Wraith]The calendar hangs by a bent nail over the heater, cheap cardboard with cheery art that never quite lines up with the perforated seams,Little doors numbered in fake gold, smiling snowmen and halos of plastic joy framing scenes you’re supposed to open one at a time like rationed dreams,Someone

Underword Mistletoe Trouble [Wreath]The office party already smells like bad decisions and discounted sugar cookies, cheap champagne fizzing in plastic like it has something to prove,Somebody spiked the punch until it leaned sideways, the speaker in the corner coughs out holiday covers that make the originals sound nearly smooth.Tinsel droops from the ceiling like it

Tinsel That Learned To Bleed [Wraith]Blood-red garland snakes along the hallway like a bad idea someone doubled down on,looped too tight around the banister, choking the wood in glitter that looks sticky enough to sting,cheap plastic trying to play artery, catching every flash from the tree lights and turning it into a low-grade threat,like the

Tinsel, Kerosene, And Horns [Wraith]The tree went up the day after Thanksgiving, crooked in the stand like it already knew this apartment did not deserve straight lines or happy endings,Cheap plastic branches trying hard to look evergreen, sagging under dollar store ornaments and a single string of lights that buzzed like angry hornets over unpaid

Threadbare Cheer [Wreath]The phone does its little seizure on the coffee table again, screen flaring white-blue in the half dark like a hyperactive firefly that never learned when to quit,Group chat banner flashes with some cheery title from last year’s optimism, “Holiday Hooligans,” or something equally desperate, and I stare at it, then absolutely refuse

Three Ghosts and a Cigarette-Stained Christmas [Wraith]Leonard’s flat hummed like a dying fridge, a low, annoyed vibration in the bones of the walls,TV throwing cheap tinsel colors over nicotine-yellow paint and a threadbare chair that had memorized his weight,he sat slouched in it like a grudge that never got resolved, glass of warm whiskey cupped

The Wraith in the MirrorI found it in the attic—dust and cobwebs,an ornate mirror with a gold-trimmed frame,glass clouded by centuries of neglect.The swirling motifs still danced in my flashlight’s glow,faded vines and flowers telling of grandeur past. A voice at the back of my mind said leave it—the air too thick, the tension prickling