There’s a haunting that lives with me in my bed.

It whispers at night things that he said.

Not fever. Not famine. Not fear.

Something worse.

It’s a hush from the heavens that rewrote his soul’s curse.

And it feels like the plague—

Yes, the plague is upon me.

No, not in a sick sickness, just a dark darkness that’s empty.

And the mirror— it won’t speak, though I beg it to lie.

And the clock, it just stares and doesn’t reply.

The air bends to soothe me, yet it’s too heavy to trust.

It weighs of a promise filled of cinder and dust.

It dances behind me with silk-laden feet—

a lover, a mourner, a darkness in fleet.

It curls ’round my temples and sings down my spine.

Then it calls me to drink from its venomous wine.

I tried to outrun it, I always have tried.

But it knows where my dreams and my

secrets collide.

I reach for the light but it flickers away,

like a lie at the cusp of the things I won’t say.

So I live in the shadows, just out of sight

like a ghost in my skin lost in perpetual night.

So—with a candle, a quill, and a trembling hand I still write.

And my crown, though it bleeds, you should know...I welcome its kiss.

Signed— The Keeper. The Ink. The Abyss.