Three In The Morning

Heavy and inadmissible

You'll hold your breath

And count to ten

And wait for the shadows to disperse

And the crickets to start up again

And for the thrum of your heartbeat

To stop

One

The walls creak and twist

Paint peeling

Roaches crawling

Cracks and groans

Creaks of wood beams

Cries of drywall and fuck all else

Two

The furniture shifts

Just an inch or two

All at once

Scuffs on the wood floor

And crying from the wood door

For it's clamped tight on hinges

And can not follow

Three

There is no light

Not even the bedside clock glows tonight

But the air swims

Grows thick

Grows too dense to sense

Where you are and what this is

What you're refusing to breathe in

Isn't oxygen anymore

Four

The bed trembles

At last

The covers slowly drawing away

From where they've been wrapped around you

You sit up to grab

For something, anything

As cold hits your legs and you reach

Five

And now the bed frame is

Groaning, rocking

Splintering down to the last wood chip

Over and over again

Breaking laws and breaking down

A horrible, shrill, wretched sound

That leaves your bones to ache

And your teeth to clamp and

Six

The shadows drip

Down from their perch

Slithering at first

Before gaining speed

And racing fast enough

To rock the ceiling fan

To make papers fly

And knock the lamp off the desk

And the bed screams louder and

Seven

You can't move

Hands clamped over your ears

Legs tense, shoulder tense, toes tense, fingers tense, stomach tense, arms tense, skull tense enough to feel the throb of your brain against your skull and the stuttering of your heart as it begins to slow once and for all

Eight

There is no semblance of calm or laws or rules and the room is upside down, sideways, tilting on its axis as furniture shifts and the air grows more dense and the shadows scream all at once as laughter springs from somewhere just as you hit

Nine

And you waste no time

To try and find

The knife you keep

At your bedside

You blindly reach

Across the bed

To grasp and fumble

Through the dread

You feel the sheets

Your metal clock

A copper lamp

A marker top

You hit the drawer

And reach right in

You snatch your knife

And then hit

Ten

.

. .

. . .

. . . .

There is a hush

A quiet

A blanket of peace so sudden

Your eyes snap open

Your room is still

Nothing has moved or changed

The clock has flickered back to life

It reads 'past time to rest'

. . . .

. . .

. .

You don't want to

But you take a breath

Just as the AC kicks on

And the crickets start again