Seething-black snake-serpent in MY HOUSE keep your distance creature I know you I know where you slither-crawled from where you’ll get yourself back in to curled sleepless round your nest of rotted chalk eggshells hatching only dead cells.

Out from here meet me again on the road between our houses you have walked it on your belly so many times and I saw you saw you from the dew-drip hedge as you made for my door under my door through my door without me unlocking for you like you own my house my house is not your house but I pay you to live here in this torment here with you STARING from those broken splinter-starred windows every night every morning.

Tonight I will be in your house snake tonight I walk from tree to tree unfurling like the shadow tongue tasting your absence insisting on your presence as I in turn slip through that broken window pooling in the starlight listening to each hesitant creak of board and whistle-in of dream-breath.

I visit you tonight as a neighbour as a tenant as a spirit as a plaintiff as an ending to keep silent our agreement as the stairs drift in the night’s breeze I climb through feelings you will never have and bring you never-will-bes as your coils slacken round your end-night thoughts.