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I live under the wallpaper of the house that no longer belongs to me

There’s a corner where it’s peeling that’s the good spot
Right there I can angle myself to peep out a bit better at the guests

Picking their scabs when they sleep chewing on their flaxen hair fibrous and a digestive aid
I need all the nutrients I can get, grow me big and strong I

Slitherly one time I sat on the husband’s chest till I heard the nightmare brewing
I don’t know why I
Why did I do that?
Whispering get out of my house get out of my house get out my my MY

The child woke up yesterday and came into the kitchen
I was eating butter from the paper (1 slice every second
Night otherwise they’ll notice, they’ll notice) he fainted

Crawlwise spider I back up the fridge—I’m only human
Why shouldn’t I have what they have. I climb back through the ceiling panel

The next day the husband pokes around the attic and I
I
I slidingly down into the walls, hiding amongst the gypsum flakes and mummified rats
“Oh my god, it smells like shit up here! What the fuck”
I hear him toss my bedding about “what the fuck”

Police
Folks in hats
Poking holes in walls
Contractor and a new alarm

Meanwhile I, huddlingly in the corner me

I no longer come out and I’ve become bit by bit
Wall shaped, flat and broad, like a worm or a python
Flexible and muscular. I feed on mouse droppings, spiders, sawdust

Slitheringly slugwise

And one day I’ll be big enough
Strong enough I
While the family dozingly in their beds
Hugging them close fine you may live here bring the
walls in as I part of the house and I and now you and now we,
Friendily we



David is a New Zealand-based writer. Though originally from the rural Waikato, he left to follow his calling and successfully received a grey life working in a public sector cubicle in the capital. Like many new writers out there, he has a lifetime of poems-in-the-margins and first sentences of novels on which to draw. Check out his one other published poem: https://www.takahe.org.nz/skin-in-me/.
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20 Jan 2025

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