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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/.
Current Issue
16 Feb 2026

Water is life here, and it's evident in that if you stray too far off the beaten path and away from water, you will get lost and you’ll be lucky if anyone sees you again before sundown. My village is settled neatly between two gentle rolling mesas and along a thin river in a sparsely populated community lovingly called ‘the valley’.
In the beginning, the ocean was lonely / and so she created a fifteen-year-old girl / (or was it the other way around?)
It’s me not you, and the / Hole in the sky still weeps sticky tears.
Wednesday: Lies Weeping by Glen Cook 
Friday: Slow Gods by Claire North 
Issue 9 Feb 2026
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By: Natasha King
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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Strange Horizons
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