It came at first when I was sleeping,
in my dreams I felt it breathing.
To my window while I was cooking, from
the corner of vision would see it snooping.
It would come in like a cat while I was eating,
brush my leg uninvited, for attention.
Leave quietly when I wasn’t looking
until I raised my eyes from reading.
Then it came to my bedroom door
and I could hear it scratching, scratching.
Scary, insistent, prowling, invading,
it is never a ghostly presence.
Far from dead, it is coming to life,
not threatening, it is begging.
I hear it denied, denounced, defended—
so I am not alone in imagining.
Today it was sitting on my sofa.
I asked it to leave and it stared.
It moved with me to the loo,
perched on the bath and waited.
I heard its breath catch as I washed,
felt it tug at my skirt as I dried.
It has not left me all day and I fear night,
as if it might creep in my ear, fill my head.
I don’t want it to become part of me,
I want it to go away, bother another.
Only I don’t wish this on anyone.
This heavy presence, this animus
that we have created in so many ways.
For everything I do brings it closer,
I am learning how it belongs.
I feed it, nurture it, bring it home.
I cannot sleep while it curls on my pillow
where it waits with its stories to tell.
I know them as bad dream tales,
as dark-and-stormy-night pages
that turn and turn without end.
The light is still on and I can see it
waiting for my ear to be close enough.
It tells me there is time to see and hear,
if I want to stroke it, I will understand.
“Ice melts, waters rise, the world burns
yet still men ask the price of oil …”
It is this.
2020 © Andie Davidson