Anomalous

These little haunted things I call my thoughts,
I lock them up in this ornate box.
Turn the key: click, click, click.
Here I am, not quite dead but deathly sick.
It scratches, belches, kicks and knocks,
whatever is in this tiny box.
Swallow the key and don a crown,
but I only want to put it down-
alas, I cannot, this is my fateful lot.
Stomach aches and keys and locks.
There is no cure, no secret door;
everything is as it was before.
Almost. Not exactly. Not precisely.
And lastly, it comes back and back and back and back and back and back.
Hymns of revelation.
Leave me at the altar.
She looked back but I did not faulted.
Spread your wings and flap, flap, flap.
Jabs and stabs and bloody rags,
all torn and tossed and left for dead;
here I am within my head;
yet not alone this time.
There is a visitor: a quiet, timid soul;
a beautifully dark traveler.
Terrified, I would expect, given the complexity of this triviality.
Will you play and will you stay or will you simply run away and leave me here with my box and with my crown and awful thoughts?
To ache and cry and drown and die?
Interesting, nonetheless, to welcome such an unexpected guest.
Give it space and do not kill it,
not just yet, not until I can regret.
That is how we measure friends: by their ends and by amends and by and by and bye.