Holding Fire

Can you feel me? Petting the edges of your thoughts?

Can you feel the breath rolling down your neck,

Raising goosebumps and ghosts from days long past?

Can you feel me, the essence of something you forgot,

Curling around your throat like the decimation of a promise?

.

Because I am there.

.

You thought you could shove the shadows of those days

Into the protective hands of your ribcage and they would

Vanish into the night, turn invisible like cigarette smoke

And the name behind the shifting characters of time.

What pretty masks you've worn, pretending they aren't yours.

.

It's all the same shade.

.

Gold, like the spun silk dreams of me webbing across your neurons.

And maybe a touch of silver that plagues the core of your desires.

How long have I filled the empty spaces in your thoughts?

For how many days, months, years, decades, have I pulsed

Deep inside your psyche with a drumbeat that makes you whine?

.

I've just been invisible.

.

You don't know my name yet because you haven't spoken it

But there will be a moment when the storm breaches the horizon

And your lips will wrap around the hiss of my name with a firm grip

On the hand that's played with fate a little too much to be innocent

And lightning will strike straight through your core, right to ground.

.

And you'll never be rid of me.