Content Warning: dark themes, death, horror

(Xestobium rufovillosum)

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Darkness swarms like scavengers

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over the discarded carapace of the house. Its bone

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smooth grooved wooden beams & white

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plastered walls teem with silence.

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All is wormed through with quiet.

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The grandfather clock is yet a child

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to this world and he hoists grubby arms

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aloft, tottering ever slowly toward

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midnight. The house gathers itself

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around a deathbed. The ceiling bows

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to place its head against a heaving

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chest. Listen: vermin in the gables hush

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themselves in reverence. They, too,

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press pink ears to thin walls straining

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to catch the final death-sigh. The priest

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muffles last rites and quietly ribbons

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his Bible, anxiously fingers its spine.

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A soul should fly up and out, carried

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on its last breath, but must first

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clear canopy and the damned

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rafters quickly before the Devil’s reply.

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Family packs around the dying, bereft

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of soothing sound, quiet as they are

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afraid to spook the departing spirit.

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As the hands of time clasp together

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overhead and clang their toll, soul’s

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mortal mist alights the bed when

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it should escape instead, ascend.

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             Down it is, then.

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Gasps rip through glove-covered lips,

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pursed tight against this trespass.

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The time has come, the veil thinned,

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t-t-t-tap the Devil wants in. By signs:

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his knock, his frass, it is we know, evil

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is a silhouette cut from Nature’s

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shadow. Darkness pupates long

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in the soul, it’s true. Which early hour

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will hatch it to claim its due in you?