I thought she was nocturnal,
yet she lived within me
like a quiet tenant
who doesn’t pay rent,
and yet claimed everything that was mine.
I never invited her,
but once she was there –
I didn’t protest.
I called her a dream,
fatigue, the weather,
a bad season.
But she came cloaked in velvet half-shadows
and sat on the bed
as if it were her own.
Her hands were cold and patient.
She arranged my head
on the heavy pillow,
embroidered with fog.
Uncomfortable –
yet shaped
to fit my thoughts.
She was like the sea in winter:
she didn’t invite,
but didn’t push away either.
One could stand in it up to their ankles,
allowing the water to slowly take away sensation.
I liked her constancy.
When the faces drifted away,
when emotions lost their color,
and past and future blended into something
I didn’t want to name.
She wrapped me in her shroud –
familiar as a landscape behind glass.
There wasn’t a moment
when the world disappeared.
It simply didn’t exist without her in it.
I didn’t get up unless I had to.
Friendships faded away,
and the only thing that pulled me from bed
were obligations to small beings –
fish, rats, plants.
I wanted them dead –
but their lives depended on me,
and I couldn’t let them go.
Caring for them was the thread
that kept me tethered.
Though she was beside me,
the weight fell on me –
responsibility
for our puny existences.
Only later did I see
how deep the mark she left was
etched on my face.
And how hard it was
to lift my head
without it.
When she whispered in my ear
with tender concern:
“It has always been this way.
You were born in this darkness.
Light is an invention of those
who cannot understand
what you are facing.”
I believed her.
For it was something familiar,
like a childhood lullaby,
though I couldn’t remember
who sang it.
In hindsight, I think
she was closer to me than the light –
that faithful, dark guardian.
How I mistook her arms
for warmth,
her weight for closeness.
Yet she was only fog,
capable of mimicking my voice.
The hardest part was saying goodbye
not to pain,
but to that consistency –
that she was always there
when everything else
had the courage to leave.
And though now I know a better life is possible,
it is different,
untamed,
terrifying in its unpredictability –
without the shroud her presence once provided.
