The Tenant
The Tenant
I gave the darkness horns so I could point at it.
I gave it a face that was not mine,
a throne outside the skull,
a name to curse when the night went wrong.
But look at where it sits:
inside the gold curve of my own head,
close enough to whisper,
one clawed hand cupped over the eye
that would have shown me everything.
It never crept in from outside.
I fed it here. I called it enemy
so I would never have to call it mine.
Every blame I handed off to hell
came back by morning, wearing my voice,
the same old flattery, the same old fear,
the same small pride that could not bear
to be the one who did it.
The eye keeps burning through its fingers.
It has always been open.
It only asks that I stop looking away.
So let the horns come off.
Let the mask slide down to a mirror.
The thing I feared was never at the gate.
It was the hand that wrote the story of the gate
and sat here all along, still holding the pen.
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