He doesn’t know where to start
so he looks into the styrofoam cup
to find a reflection he has become
proud of staring from cold coffee
it holds. A reflection just as nervous
as him. So, after a long, deep breath
he begins.
Even when it got bad, nobody
that mattered had a fucking clue;
family, his boss, employees,
even lovers unless they
used, too.
Yeah, it was like he was two things:
when it was daylight he could be
who he was on the day he was born,
the same guy they knew. But at home
alone on night’s pathway at the end
of every day he became something else,
a spore
comfortable in places where
only darkness offered company
surrounded by his own decay,
its stages progressed until a good,
long while
was taken before he forgot how
he’d used to pretend his wasn’t
a coward’s suicide. Longer still trying
to keep his secret hidden during daylight.
Completely on accident, it happened,
a little bit of honesty slipped out, all his
nighttime rituals
revealed and really, that was all
it took. A hand attached to someone
who loved him and had, for a time,
made a home close to his nightly
hell, took
him away from his darkness. They came
together into this very room, where
all the souls give off so much light
the spore that he was won’t happen to find
anywhere it might even try to grow, so,
in its stead it occurred to him, given chance, he
just might give it a go. And grow.
