Poems by Rose

Haunting

 

I never feared the killer much—

his breath was bound by bone.

However monstrous he became,

his life could still be gone.

 

A pulse can pause.

A blade can blunt.

A body meets its end.

Even the cruelest mortal man

must finally descend.

 

But the dead—

 

those frightened me.

 

The ghosts who slipped through solid walls,

who laughed at latch and lock,

who wandered centuries without

a heartbeat or a clock.

 

The zombies staggering past the grave,

still hungry after death.

The demons with no mortal throat,

yet whispering with breath.

 

I feared what could not finish,

what no coffin could contain—

the thing that lived beyond the flesh,

beyond the blood, the brain.

 

I thought that was the terror:

 

something time could never tame,

something death could never drown,

something centuries could not claim.

 

Then I learned

the dead are not alone.

 

Some hauntings have a heartbeat.

Some sleep beside your skin.

Some hold your heart with gentle hands

before they wander in.

 

They do not rattle windows.

They do not crawl through walls.

They learn the rooms you lock away

and memorize them all.

 

They know which word will wake the wound,

which silence makes it spread,

then leave a voice inside your voice

that speaks when theirs is dead.

 

Because cruelty needs no costume.

No cellar.

No disguise.

 

Sometimes horror holds your heart

and looks you in the eyes.

 

No black-and-blue to photograph.

No blood upon the floor.

Just words that find the hidden rooms

and memorize each door.

 

A bruise will bloom,

then lose its blue.

A broken bone can mend.

 

But tell a heart it has no worth—

and where does damage end?

 

The mouth that made the wound may close.

The man may leave.

May die.

 

Yet still his sentence settles in

and learns another life.

 

It curls beneath your consciousness.

It nests behind your name.

It borrows your own voice one day

and speaks itself the same.

 

And if you do not drag it out,

if you do not break the chain,

a child may someday carry words

they never heard him say.

 

And theirs may carry them again.

 

And suddenly I knew

 

why the dead had frightened me for years—

 

because they traveled through

the walls,

the dark,

the decades,

 

untouched by death or door.

 

But some men hollow while they breathe.

Some lose the light within.

The body keeps its beating heart

while something else grows dim.

 

And darkness does what darkness does—

it looks for somewhere new.

It enters through an open heart

and leaves its shadow through.

 

So let the graveyard breathe tonight.

Let pale things cross the hall.

Let corpses claw through coffin wood.

Let shadows scale the wall.

 

Let every demon bare its teeth.

Let every dead thing rise.

 

They no longer frighten me

the way a living man can

when something in him dies.

 

Because a ghost must first be dead

before it learns to stay.

 

But some men lose their moral pulse

long before they pass away.

 

And the cruelest kind of manhood

does not need a fist or knife—

 

it plants its poison in a heart,

 

then teaches it

to outlive

a life.