Victim

You come and go with the darkness.
I never see you leave but after snowfall

I see your footprints across the lawn.
You sleep alone at night in the shadows

under my exhaustion, a luminescence.
You keep one golden eye open

just in case I forget myself.
Your eye seeps around my raw edges

like cyanide, like a cloud of mustard gas,
like radiation in the house of the apocalypse.

I’m sealing myself in with duct tape,
pulling down blinds, wearing dark glasses;

a hermit with only a mantra
and a half-empty glass for company.

If only you were a little kinder,
I would welcome you with my blood.