The waking was swift.
Eyes closed–
the world already stirring.
I wore her face–
a hollow-eyed shadow
hungry for something unnamed.
She ran.
Every corridor, every mirror–
already me.
A flawless glass,
a mouth filled with purpose
that was never hers.
She fled her house, her body,
the life she thought she held.
The road stretched ahead,
slick with fear,
glittering like an invitation I had laid.
She sought refuge in echoes–
memory’s dim corridors.
Faces turned.
Eyes blackened, mouths
stretching into my smile–
She ran again.
Back to the last fortress.
Through the peephole,
I watched her waiting–
soft, human still,
pleading with the shadow knocking inside.
The walls thickened.
The air curdled.
Inside, inside–
her own face became the storm.
Claws at skin, screams torn raw–
refusing to vanish.
And then–
children appeared in rooms
that were never there.
Three, small, impossible,
shaping themselves from her fear.
She held them close,
barricading the doorway.
But the smallest shifted–
a mask of terror,
black eyes staring back at her.
The becoming
was no longer outside–
It was in her arms,
in the pulse beneath her skin.
A thin thread trembled–
her hope, fragile, still hers.
She called my name,
though she did not know it.
She clung–
clinging to denial,
to the spark that might remain.
A cry–sharp, fleeting.
The shadow lingered,
slipping like smoke, like stolen breath.
She woke.
The bed cold.
The house empty.
I traced her face
with a hand she could not feel.
Somewhere inside,
I wait.
Patient.
