What Resides

That little cottage

   sitting on a dark hill,

overlooking

what once was a silver place,

as moonlight

guided all of the spirits

to their destinations.

That little cottage

   which stands lonely now,

when it was abandoned by the Wind.

Only silence has come to claim it,

that silver tongue, slipping through the windows

and all of the cracks in the floor

   which never speak,

which stand mute and pervasive in that dark place,

in the shadows behind chairs,

echoing the smoke stains of the heart.

The closet door stands open,

the only words left in this house, telling me

You once shut this door on yourself

   and lived here,

in all the hidden corners of a child's closet--

I was the doll.

This was the paper boy come to claim my Night.

I closed that cottage door and

   locked it.

Only black dreams are whispered here.