The Mind Mire

They came not cloaked in shadow’s thread,
But whispered through the mind instead.
No footfall graced the creaking floor,
No knock was heard at thought’s back door.

Their wings were smoke in spiral form,
A hush before a lightning storm.
They touched not skin, but thought and breath,
And fed upon the mind’s slow death.

Their eyes were gaps in sanity,
Black holes that drank reality.
Their voices, oh! a chorus drowned,
A lullaby that coils and hounds.

They slid between my waking sighs,
And nested deep behind my eyes.
Each dream they pressed was thick with rot,
Of teeth that smiled where mouths were not.

My tongue grew foreign in my throat,
My name a tattered, fluttering note.
The walls began to hum and bleed
My memories crawled out to feed.

I begged them go. They only laughed,
And sucked my thoughts like poisoned draft.
They laced my truths with wicked seams
Turned prayers to knives, and songs to screams.

And now I walk, but not alone
Their wings have grafted to my bone.
A sylph, they say, should dance on air
But I drift mad, and unaware.

~ Heather Patton/Verdant Butterfly

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© 2026 Heather Patton · The Verdant Butterfly
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