Twilight Child

I feel so strange these days Hollow Disembowelled As if the core of me had been ripped out by invisible hands And scattered to the wind like desert dust I am like a ghost I drift – wraith-like – through the perpetual days My skin crawling with each brief touch of sunlight My eyes shrinking from the gilded glare I feel safest in darkness I love to sink my fragile body into the misty arms of night And let her caress my battered soul to sleep I am too tired to face the world I may glimpse at it now and then from my battlemented window A hasty glance is quite enough It’s such a frightening place for a quivering mouse like me There are so many holes and dark spaces Cracks in the woodwork through which I could fall And beneath it all a hazy underworld of debauchery and corruption… Waiting to snatch a young pallid woman And swallow her entirely whole No I shrink from such a fate I turn my face towards the moon instead Tilting my cheek to receive her whispering quicksilver kiss She hovers far above me like a motherly goddess Always keeping her eye on me She is the keeper of my world and the guardian of my life I adore her as I adore my realm of shifting shadows and gentle moonbeams Like a jungle cat I pad confidently down the corridors of night Protected – sheltered – encouraged But alas I cannot linger here forever The bold brusque hands of Daylight are hammering at the doors Pounding with a merciless insistence The world wants my fleshly sacrifice It has stalked me patiently all these years A sinuous tawny lion of sunlight and flame and bright hard reality I know deep down in my heart of heart’s that I can’t evade him much longer The foundations of my twilight world are slowly but surely crumbling Chinks of light are flooding in at the seams Outside I can hear the rasping voice of Fate herself Sometimes she speaks soft and low Like a mother to her babe Sometimes she shouts An angry Medusa But every time the words are the same – She’s calling out my name…