Everywhere a special kind of maiming
is going on in a recognizable dark.
It's a monster, but average and bored.
It carries a flail and plays a threshing game.
It cuts us darker till we're spare and part.
Tongue. Torso. It shaves us, wears us, thin.
It hones us to a pin, a single inward point.
It makes a bone spur out of us and out of joint.
Our knot is drawn into a stranglehold.
What we know is pinched and tight. And day
is just a hard stone to whittle a self away on
until it cracks and sinks. You think you're cold?
Touch it. It's in the closet and under the bed
and in the alleyway and in your head.
By catherine wing