Worm

I am a Bobbit worm
I live alone deep in a burrow of my own making
My mouth an open bear trap
Crooked teeth replaced with polished daggers
Patiently wait to ensnare an unsuspecting passerby
I can open myself or snap shut just as easily
I am isolated despite my halfhearted efforts
Solitude suits me best anyway

Alone is a lawless wasteland
Littered with the weathered bones of love and liquor
And tattered scraps of flannel shirts
Where cologne and sweat still weakly cling
The barren ground growing ever crowded
With bar receipts and gold wrappers from empty nights
The company I keep is of no consequence

Sometimes when I venture out from hiding
I meet someone and there is a magnetic spark
Static that has built steadily over years pours out at their touch
The way a shock leaps from your hand to theirs after you’ve dragged your socks on the carpet
The pistons and gears of my stagnant heart shrug off the dust piled thick from disrepair
And work as if they had never stopped

It is painful and unfamiliar
The deposits of rust breaking free from the cast iron
Lodging in my ribs and releasing a cloud of moths to thump around inside my belly
Until they can escape my throat to find the street lamp above us

But just as it began it is over
Unexpected and ill prepared
And I am again left alone
Crying out into a canyon so deep I cannot see the entirety of the abyss
To hear only my own desperate voice returning from the darkness below
If someone is at the bottom returning my call
I cannot hear them.