That night, I rose from sleep’s womb unexpected
To stand at the window heavy with dread.
Drawn by despair I’d somehow intercepted,
I saw a mound in the moonlight spread.
Beneath the branches of a barren tree,
It seemed to grow and shamble into shape:
A humanish figure but dripping & sleek
Oozing black blood from a hole in its nape.
Lifting its arms, the fiend tilted its head
To gaze through the boughs at the yellow moon.
Opening its mouth—a blackness that bled—
It howled in the dark its singular doom.
I grasped at the wall and stifled a scream.
I groaned with the pain in the monster’s throat.
Hurt more by the sound than I seemed to be,
The creature fell backwards, clutching its heart.
Then slumping in sorrow, its yellow eyes glowing,
Filled with the light it longed to consume,
The demon dissolved in the horror of knowing
The endless desire locked with it, entombed.
About the Author
Andrew Brenza’s formal, speculative verse has been published in or is forthcoming from Blue Unicorn, Bewildering Stories, Strange Horizons, The Dawntreader, and Dark Horses
