I have a pet rock
who lives in my head
and escapes to my heart
each day.
Sometimes I wake in the morning
and it’s already there,
infecting the blood
with each beat
like a drug
coursing through my body,
high while I sleep.
Some days it’s
lured out by a voice
in the middle of the day,
the sound distracting me
as it slips
from the locked room
where I desperately
try to hide it
until I can’t breathe
and lose all sense of what came before,
or care about the recklessness
that will follow.
The rock needs no food,
yet it grows each day,
becoming harder to contain.
Some nights I don’t tuck it in.
I let it be free,
for it can do no harm
if only I know it exists.
