A dirty laundrey room late Friday night. The hour when the beer-
breath, stumbling hedonists just begin to disperse and settle down.

Alone with furiously spinning laundrey and the ambitious hum of
electricity, I revisit the black cesspool of rich emptiness that
fills the shadow of my soul. Everlastingly deep, it hides wilted
flowers, dessicated corpses, and disembodied hands growing in
fields, their gnarled fingers like the tendrils of wispy seaweed
rippling on the seabottom. They grope into my innermost and most
shameful crevices, claw and dig their nails into my flesh, and
wrench me down into my own darkness. Stay, whisper the
hands. Stay.

I see a child emerge from the darkness, her eyes not eyes but two
empty black holes inviting me in. I stare at her and she stares
back, an apparition solid in resolve. "You forgot me," she
mouthes over and over again, floating closer, her round
eyesockets forever trained on my unwilling eyes.

The dryers are still, and still our eyes are locked.


--Tigergem