Your Own Personal Demons

they show up at 2:37 a.m. not with pitchforks, but with your mother’s voice, your boss’s smirk, the girl who left in '89. they don’t knock. they seep in through the cracks— in the plaster, in the bottle, in your goddamn spine. they light cigarettes with your regrets, spit beer on your dreams, laugh like old men in a losing bar. you feed them every time you say yes when you mean get the hell away. they sit on your chest like a mortgage, like cancer, like love. and still— you buy them a drink.