The Rot Between the Trees

A poem

Darkness drips like tar from the twisted branches, polished obsidian claws scratching at the shroud of night.

The forest unhinges its jaws, unspooling a beckoning path into the snarl of its maw, each step further from light’s grace.

Sickly sweet humus mingles with the damp breath of rotting trunks, a perfume luring the lost and weary.

From the undergrowth, unblinking eyes pebbled with rheumy cataract-clouds, myriads of accusers drinking in your shuddering exhale.

Shadows shift against the inky backdrop as something ancient peers around the curvature of moonlight, something hungering for the soft, trembling pulse at your throat.

Sanity frays like cobwebs in the creeping miasma, where madness taints the loam, and the whisperers sway amid the bracken.