STRANGER.

i have lost count of the days

since i have felt anything.

the lines carved into my wall

marking the rising and setting

of the sun

over

and over

and over again

i am running out of space.

soon the lines will overlap

with each other

making shapes that will eventually

spell out the words that i always feared

they would tell me.

when you are not friends

with your own reflection

the person looking back at you

feels so distant that you might as well

be looking at a stranger.

it will whisper things to you

that you already know too well.

it will grab you by the throat

and crack open your skull

and reach into your brain

until it finds what it was looking for.

your stranger will

twist it’s fingers around

and in doing so it will jumble up

fact and opinion

until you can see no difference

between the two.

it will put its filthy, cracked, rotten hands

over your ears so when the outsiders

shout that it is safe to finally leave

you will only hear the thoughts

that your stranger carved into

your brain with the knife that you gave it.