act one

i try to write a happy poem
but i am bed rotting, watching victoria pedretti be haunted
by her demons.

i try to write a happy poem
but my window doesn’t close all the way
and the tree that leans into my bedroom wall reaches
in like the cold, spindling arms of an ex-lover:
phantasmal cathy clawing
through lace-trimmed curtains for her heathcliff – a memory
no longer contained; reality bleeding
into a dream.

i try to write a happy poem
but my own demons linger in peripheries: in rattling walls;
woodpanels swelling like stormy nights; a thumping heart
beneath floodrotten floorboards.
the ghoul beneath my bed gasps as victoria pedretti dies again,
leaves loved ones to fester in their grief.