cats
I’ve felt your approach for sometime now,
And I heard your steady breathing come near.
Your weight settles on my bed—fears confirmed,
With great stealth you creep forward, ever closer, ever close.
Above all, it is your proximity I’ve cowered from.
Held blanket and sheet over my face
Hoping to drive out your banshee cry
For nothing less could drive me from the sanctuary of mind.
The soft silken whisper is all that betrays
As you come searching for me.
My own personal monster, my bestial tormentor
Hungering for blood and milk.
When I tuck my toes under the protection of my knees
I just barely escape your first touches.
I tremble, shake, tremble—I was lucky. Very lucky.
With a sibilant whisper you throw me my name:
Taunting and teasing, daring me to forsake this refuge,
This place of nighttime dreaming and give into your demand.
The call goes unheeded, for indeed I am burying myself deeper
Deeper deep into the darkness and denying your existence.
In your demonic fury you lash out, thinking to provoke me in to emergence.
Posters and scarves are torn from the walls, and smash smash smash
Go the glasses and nail polish I’ve left on the table.
My beads are scattered, my clothing tattered. You pause
Barely scraping my mirror across the wall.
I know your challenge, I’ve met it before.
Come out, you say, or I’ll smash this too.
Maybe the glass will fall upon you.
Hesitate, I do, then reluctantly poke my turtle’s head
Out from the soft shell of blanket and sheet.
Please, I beg, please just let me be.
What do you want, what do you want from me?
Greedy eyes are fixed upon mine, flashing with anger and promise.
But I know what you lust for, I know better than most.
Your nightly demands are not lost on me.
You step closer, beseeching me ever
And my will crumbles as it always does. I want only peace
Just to live in my dreams torn asunder.
Not to be trapped in the pattern I’ve fallen prey to.
But all resilience dies as you lash out at me.
You add to the scars I bare from previous encounters.
You win, I whisper with a voice full of hate.
And giving in, I give you what you wanted from the start.
Just take, take take take take take.
It’s all you ever do, no offers of love.
Because that’s all I am to you, all I’ll ever be.
I fulfil your most basic needs.