Shadows In My Room Shaped Like You

The room is empty

Empty except for morphing, breathless blackness

My chest rises and falls

It looks like you

It pants desperately and I want to beg for mercy

The blackness breathes back

I am paralysed

You have wrinkled, shrunk like a once plump balloon

The child that held you so tenderly is sobbing in his ugliness

I have left a mark on you

The things I said that disgusted the already putrid cold air

They branded me

Blocky, plain letters screaming at my stench

The cigarette burns that burst the balloon

Smoke that lives in my rib cage, at home at last

I proved my potential for evil

As I was drunk on water and salty crackers