Feel His Disease
by Linda Imbler

Feel His Disease

You have always found a way to haunt me,

although yesterday was years ago.

After each night yawns

and midnight has settled into sleep,

you come with your graveyard eyes,

your persistent motif of possessiveness,

trying to gift me once again

with stuffed animals 

that shed decades of lint and false fur,

or jewelry that lost its sparkle

and now lays in your hand corroded and corrupt.

All the things that never, ever mattered.

Because all I wanted and needed from you,

were not the darkling, nightmare eyes,

but eyes that really saw me

and reflected the sun.