Along the alley wall
it crawls, spider-like
and grotesque, face
like a child’s, a murdered
child’s, swollen and black
with coagulated blood;
It smiles, teeth sharp
as ice slivers formed
on remote mountains
where hearts and corpses
remain as cold as its
eyes, which glisten like
icicles in the storm-choked
night, where it climbs
without fear or slippage,
tiny hands at the tips of
each limb clasping silently
as it lowers itself onto
a balcony where the
scent of prey is thick:
a child whose fears are
ripe for manifesting,
who presses her pale face
hard against the screen
and grins toothily at
the dismayed visage
before her, staring with
unblinking feral eyes.
No fear clouds her mind,
no joy, no dreams, save
a hunger in her gaze
that echoes its own,
her soul parched, stunted,
starved even of nightmares.
Her visitor turns and flees
into the sewer below
as welts open in its shadowy
flesh, fear crescendoing,
rapturous hunger uncoiling;
with no nightmares to harvest
but its own, the abyssal
famine consumes from within,
leaving nothing
but a shell
of black dream dust,
banished with a laugh,
a cough,
an apathetic sigh.
