something moved when i turned on the light

Ignorance is bliss

Something moved when I turned on the light.

Something big, and ugly, and horrible.

Something foul, and fleet, and festering.

Something that shirks the light.

 

It darted behind some furniture

Where it is dark, and warm, and comfortable

Out, out, of the light, into the dank and deep;

It hates the sight of itself.

 

I saw where it went. My first impulse was

To overturn the nooks, and air out the crannies

But the very thought of it made my skin crawl -

What if I do find it?

What if it is more horrible than I could imagine,

With a dozen hairy limbs; verminous, blind and shapeless,

Wet, venomous, and leaping?

What if it has been there all the while?

And who knows what else I’ll find

Lurking behind my pretty sofas,

Swept under the façade…

 

No, it was just a gecko.

Or, at worst, a cockroach.

A small nuisance, a pest,

Easily gotten rid of;

The only, minor blemish

In an otherwise spotless mind.

It can wait, we shall clean it out later.

So I switch the light back off, quickly,

And softly close the door

And go off, to bed,

uneasy,

Deliberately not looking at dark corners

Lest I should see something.

I try to distract myself

I try to push to the very back of my mind

That hellish, fleeting shadow…

 

Something moved when I turned on the light.

Something big, and ugly, and horrible.

 Something foul, and fleet, and festering.

And I am afraid to find out what it is…

 

Reviews

[Terpsichore]

You write for the mind alright. Brilliant twist around on 'afraid of the dark.' T