Hauntings don’t depend on death;

not all nightmares are restricted to the realm of sleep.

No, there are nightmares more intense and ordinary:

the ones that occur in the day.

All of your days.

In the purview of shelter, 

a safety distorted,

care corrupted. 

The live hauntings of control—

corporeal ghosts of noxious entanglement 

embellished as love.

Haunted alive;

a body that shuts down to a withering touch, 

or the uneasy palpitations that arise to too many 

lines crossed. 

The vacant smile and the scream 

swallowed down, restrained.

Heightened dread bleeding through the quotidian and routine.

Anxiety breathing on a knife’s edge—

living as if between the blades of kitchen shears.

It will be better this time;

it’ll be fine.

You wanna bet?

You wait with bated breath.

Listening tentatively,

attention laser-focused to the slightest of movements. 

Even silence isn’t quiet,

you think.

It could be better this time.

It may be fine.

But you’ve choked on hope before

and wizened from the futility of waiting for double rainbows.

You know there will be another shoe.

The live hauntings are far more terrifying.

The perpetual loops you can’t escape from,

until you escape from them.