“There’s always been someone else inside my house.”

There’s always been someone else inside my house. 

I’ve never seen what they look like,

just an outline with long hair 

and unfathomable limbs,

extra elbows and too many hands,

but I know they’re there,

a gaunt shadow in the bathroom

reflecting off the sink handle.

I imagine they’d have

hollowed out eyes,

a violin waistline,

and skin that squirms like maggots.

Bones might shift and struggle to

break free of their fleshy limits.

Worms may wriggle just below the surface

of their cracked concrete colored frame,

black mold bordering their fingernails,

traces of decay engraved in the corners of their mouth,

but a face that never stays,

a changeling making a home in my empty halls.

I catch a flash of them in the mirror sometimes,

but they always melt away, nail polish meeting acetone.

In the morning the kitchen is always sour

and ragged socks cling to sticky syrup trails.

The meat in the fridge is spoiled.

It’s hard around the edges, gross and gray,

but I think they like it that way so I never bother cleaning.

Most days it’s just easier to do what they like.

I found a fly while laying on the throw rug,

and thought about how

if it was lucky

it would be dead in twenty eight days.

The house smells like rot and running gas.

I find spores on the lightswitch of an uncharted wall.

The foundation shifts.

Someone’s been eating my porridge.

Someone’s been sitting in my chair.

Someone’s been sleeping in my bed. 

When the world goes quiet, I hear voices,

familiar but choked,

like lungs woven with toadstools.

Sometimes the creature whispers,

coaxing me to let them out.

I wish they’d stop turning on the stove while I’m asleep.

They’re going to burn the whole damn place down one day.