My Babadook.

Underneath, you walk. A creak under old foundation, you, caressing my feet, your favorite part. Old roots massaging the diagonal planks by herringbone pattern of hickory bark. You are far in distance, my Babadook, out of reach. To physically touch you is dark magic, black cat luck.

You will stay right there, rest, my temperamental love. My misty eyes are only meant for me to watch. Today to say a goodbye, then, the sprawling of branches scraping three window panes, across, in a line, one by one, down a dim, lit hall, dragging, scratching, breathing, piercing my ears, that nagging silence between each pause.

Breathing… Breath. Is this house becoming darker, small?

You start to creep. You are not staying underground, you want to play.

He howls by wind, “No, my beauty… I want to reminisce.”

Light through space between the broken parts of my shattered heart. Haunting day, the day my soul’s body taken away.

Convince me, a reflection of Hallow’s Eve and trickery, I turn away and, you, turning warmth into soot gray. I can feel the closer, the frame of your weathered trunk shadowing, overtaking boundaries, extremities spanning the ceiling in entirety, stretching, now, down the wall, outlining the floor, brushing the bareness of my left braceleted ankle and leg. Your dark is so close to me, alone, in home, to feel around me your pensive silhouette overpowering me, cascading my body, covering me. Carrying me, almost protecting me - a blue-some lie I tell myself during my remaining life on earth, in this home, if your intention to be.

Instead, he speaks in tongue, “You are for me, my Queen.”

I see a thousand, long fingers spreading to own me for eternity, if not just the sprawl to choke me. You are enrapturing me. I watch your blackness, your movement rise up my skin to the lower half of my belly. I fall to the far end of nothing more fatal than fear around a rook, crow, Hade’s chariot, my imagination pushing me to hide under blanket and mood, a book. However, too late. You are here, inside, sitting next to me, wrapped around, tight - still, calm and, me, hooked.

The pressure of… No, no, no. You are embracing me, ready to swallow me. You will go away, my Babadook. My escape is to seek, all I need to do is look.

And, true, nothing more but an old photo of you and me, we sitting quietly under dull ambient, orange light, nothing to angst or feel. Now I am sad, you are not real.

Before you float away, knuckles and knots retreating back to underneath, fading into my shredded sanity, whisper to me… So I understand you are no threat, only a seductive memory, bound and trapped.

He hints, my Prince, “Don’t be afraid.” He, lurking back underneath, “I will let you have peace, and keep watch over you from outside these walls of this old house I once cherished for you and me. Sleep.”

I will make certain, my King. I will practice a nocturne in the major key, to make you disappear from my thoughts and me.

Smiling, pleading, he, “I will be right here, lover, waiting with my branches, trunk and fallen leaves. And always remember, you only play for me, in a moody minor key.”

Between Jerusalem and Mexico series, a taboo love.