Emma Hyche is a poet and essayist currently based in Denver, Colorado. A recent graduate from the Colorado State University MFA in Poetry, her prose and poetry appears in LIT, Apartment, Entropy, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere.
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Cavity with a little blood in it
I walk at night alone
because I’m beginning
to feel crazy
in the pejorative sense
in bedroom cocoon the room turns
its face to the wall
you say you slept today and woke
with the sensations of a demon
crouching low on your chest
exhaling hot air like bath
water spill on your face
now sprinklers gurgle on
and through glazy window
a man washes dishes and is him
self bathed in gold
on the sidewalk,
husks of seed pods are snakes
with fangs bared
*
I cannot
see myself
out of this—
the stomach
turns over
in bed,
finds
the demon
moving
ready
the candles
and light them
I have
stopped
counting
on the future
to receive
me at all
The first
thing to know
about future
is that
it may not
occur
the demon
may never
get up