ROT

By Abbi Ruggles

The doctor scrolls through the slices of my brain,

My skull split into parts on his screen,

Like frames taken from a black and white movie,

He calls the damage inflammation,

Because he doesn’t know it’s rot, and he doesn’t know how deep it runs.

In those movies the house is always picture book perfect,

From the outside at least,

But we all know how it goes,

The noises in the night, the lost sleep,

How they’ll discover the crumbling foundations and the ghosts lingering in corners,

There’s something wrong with the house, they’ll say.

There’s something wrong with us, they’ll mean.

My foot drags sometimes, forgetting its job mid-step,

The electric wiring in my body is burnt out and frayed,

It makes the signals slow, they tell me.

All I can do is pity the zombies, the undead,

Lumbering towards sustenance,

And wonder if people will run from me too.

I cannibalise myself from the inside,

Always my own worst enemy,

Turned myself against myself until there was no way back,

A decay that can be managed but not stopped.

Life now marked out by relapse and remission,

Stretches of silence before the jump scare.

Each creak of the floorboard puts you on edge,

As you wait to come face to face with a nightmare.

#darkpoetsclub