That Quiet Beast

It's a beast sitting quietly on my chest, teeth dripping red,

Claws digging deep into the arteries feeding my thoughts.

It's such a skilled hunter, you know, able to so perfectly

Paralyze me, trap me, freeze my bones to this bed like I'm

Just another cave person trapped in the ice of a catastrophe.

.

Soft as the last touch of summer, that quiet beast breathes

Against my lips and drip feeds me poison, watching with doe eyes

To see what kind of calamity that line of prose will cause.

I am dead in the water, floating like a corpse down the river

Of bleeding sunsets, blue sunrises, and easy nightfalls.

.

I was hunting something once, hunting the dew that gathers

On the plump lips of friendships and tightly knit families

But now I've taken a seat beside the shadows and allowed

This soft beast to take its rightful spot on my chest because

There is a world full of good hunters out there and I'm not one.

.

Now I let the love roll in and feed delicately on its insincerity.

The hunters don't see the truth of the soul, only the carcass

Of the things they have gutted and left behind, and I will never

Let them know that they have shot a bullet through my heart.

I won't let them know that this quiet beast feeds on the wound.

.

Maybe this quiet beast isn't a foe then, but some old friend

That has chosen to keep me around just to suckle off my pain.

Maybe it's the best hunter of them all, maybe that makes it okay.

But I've got all the time in the world to figure that out, don't I?

To lie here as the ghosts ignore me and feed this quiet beast.