Upstairs
Footsteps over my head,
the old man descends
into an unwelcomed world.
Albino insect in a greatcoat,
black and white,
he shuffles toward a wake
no one else attends.
For children, his pockets
offer no peppermints,
just damp wads of lint
and fingernail clippings.
When his madness peeked through
our locked and shuttered windows
one day, it infected us,
forever, with bad dreams.
At night, I can hear him still:
mumbling operatic lullabies
to his lonely demons.
This poem appeared in the December 2014 issue of Disturbed Digest.