THE GUEST WHO BREATHES IN MY BOOT

By Daniel Sowa

It doesn’t knock.

It arrives as the last guest at the feast,

wearing my face backward,

a silhouette slurping the dregs of my wine.

Call it amputated twin—

the one I forgot to bury,

now gnawing at the edges of daylight,

stitching its name to the hem of my shadow.

Oh, loyal as a bruise,

it licks the walls when I pretend it’s not

there, whispers through keyholes in the

voice of a mother I never had.

We dine together, always.

It takes the gristle, the unspoken vowels,

leaves me the bones of polite conversation.

At midnight, it unspools like a film reel—

frames of my fist in the mirror,

my teeth sinking into apples that taste of ash.

Ask me why I don’t light another lamp.

Ask the moon why it borrows its glow.

The answer hisses in the cellar, a

chorus of roots chewing through stone.

We are married, not by choice but by gravity,

two syllables lodged in the same throat.

When I die, don’t trust the eulogy—

dig deeper. You’ll find it there,

still hungry, still carving its

initials beneath my ribs like a

tenant who knows the lease is

eternal.

#DarkPoetsClub