The Quiet

Whiskey-drunk twiddling the .45, his demons dance a cabaret,

But cold linoleum taunts “Stevie, you’re the only one there”

Begging tepid daylight to wash the sins away. 

Way back when, he wasn’t afraid of nothing, his sister glowed like cornflowers in May.

Steve said Hello to bad strangers, Annie chased squirrels, but of course they didn’t care

About danger while basking in blessed daylight with their parents away.  

He went missing, found in the skeleton of a spinster’s chalet

With no more than a scratch and straw in his hair,

despite the gutted goats and Enochian offered in a demonic array. 

Annie was the first to hear the knife swishing and the creaks on the foyer

While Steve grabbed Father’s .45 and got the spinster fifteen times coming up the stairs. 

His sister holds him, nightgown blossoming roses, and daylight comes to chase the terrors away.

His father wasn’t a devout man, but Daddy dragged them both to church last sunday,

eyes cried raw red, with crumpled coat, and crucifix, looking worse for wear

Before Stevie got him and Mama too, blaming the demons leading for him astray.

But even years of running and pills and the cusp of adulthood can’t keep the whispering at bay

the storm of voices gnawing, baying for Annie’s blood now, though the spinster’s no longer there,

Sleeping under carnations like their parents, but the demons she planted are there to stay

Cackling madly around his head until he prays to aseptic daylight to take him away.