Mika Moreh
This is a channelled madness
Foreign to the usual lunacy.
It is alien, creeping furtively with sharp
Footsteps that echo at the back of the neck—
It is back.
It is back, again—and all this time
All I’ve been doing
Is try and suppress it, banish it
To some underworldly dungeon
Of the deep fathomless Unconscious.
It now seems so impotent, this shoving
And hiding—it is nothing to be afraid of.
It purrs in content unsettlingly, creeping
At the back of the neck,
The footsteps echo and echo—
There’s no one behind me.
Still I look to see that non-presence
Shivering through the wooden floorboards;
All I need is to get my throat
A little wet. Say the words—
Deny or accept—
This sweat is filthy upon the skin,
Its sheen stark against my paleness,
But such little hairs there rise and
Prickle by the plenty—
Intestines trembling with an eerie acceptance
I don’t recognize, but my body
Always understands before me—
Fingers find the words in the dark.
Hanging on spider webs, a carried note
In the silence, or a string of spit
That stretches into that exquisite pause,
A sort of precipice—
I am alive after all, after
All this anguish, it is a relief, finally
To see it snap.
***
Mika Moreh is a second-year BA student in the Tel-Aviv University for Philosophy and English Literature.