What Walks With Me

It begins as weather—

a pressure at the nape,

the small hairs lifting

the way grass lifts before lightning.

I do not turn.

To turn would name it,

and what is named acquires a face,

and a face I could not unsee.

So I keep walking.

The streetlamp throws my shadow long

and then, just past it,

something hesitates—

or I imagine that it hesitates,

which is worse,

because imagining is a door

and I have already opened it.

The hum of the freezer aisle.

The empty stairwell at hour's end.

The corridor where the motion lights

flick on a beat too late,

as if catching up to a step

that wasn't quite mine.

I have tested it.

I have stopped mid-stride

to listen for the half-beat,

the soft shoe

that should have continued one pace more

before it heard me stop.

There is never a sound.

There is only the silence

of something good at silence.

I tell myself: nothing.

I tell myself the mind invents

its own pursuers, builds them

from the architecture of fear—

a coat on a hook becomes a watcher,

a branch against the window

becomes a hand, becomes

a knuckle, becomes intent.

But knowing the trick

does not undo the trick.

The body keeps its older wisdom.

The body says walk faster.

The body says do not look,

do not look, do not look—

and so of course I look,

and the hallway is empty,

and the street is empty,

and the room behind me

is exactly the room behind me,

and still the air holds

the shape of having been disturbed,

the way a chair remembers

the person who just left it,

the way a phone remembers

the warmth of the hand.

I lock the door.

I check the lock.

I check the lock again.

I lie down in the dark

and listen to the house

listening back.

Somewhere in the wall,

the heater clicks awake.

Somewhere on the roof,

a small thing moves

and is gone.

I close my eyes.

The dark does not close with me.

The dark, attentive,

keeps its long watch—

patient as a held breath,

patient as the moment

before the moment

when whatever this is

decides.