I am the knock nobody teaches you to answer. (KNOCK-KNOCK!) I slide through keyholes with a smile made of moonless winter, cloak dragging like wet church curtains over the floor. (SHHHH!) Your hallway stretches when I arrive. The bulbs flicker, then bow. The family photos turn their faces to the wall. (LOOK AWAY!) I do not run, I do not rush, I do not breathe—yet every chest in the room borrows my silence and pays it back in fear. They call me Grim, but I was ancient before names learned to crawl. (DON'T BLINK!) I have counted kings by their crowns, babies by their lullabies, soldiers by the mud in their teeth, and liars by the prayers they suddenly remembered. I know the sound of a heart bargaining. Tiny. Wet. Desperate. (THUMP—THUMP—STOP!) It begs like a mouse under a cathedral bell. My scythe is not metal. It is memory sharpened thin. (SCHING!) One swing, and your childhood bedroom opens behind your eyes. The stuffed bear with one ear. The smell of rain on your mother's coat. The last laugh you wasted on something cruel. (HA-HA—HUSH!) I harvest the whole life, not just the final breath. I peel your years from you like wallpaper in a condemned house. Do you hear that scratching? (SCRITCH-SCRITCH!) That is not a branch on the window. That is tomorrow trying to get out. I keep it locked in my ribs, rattling, starving, blue with frost. (RATTLE-RATTLE!) Every clock is my pet. Every mirror is my spy. When you check your reflection at 3:13 a.m., and something behind you smiles with too many shadows—(TURN AROUND!)—that is me rehearsing. I visit hospitals wearing fluorescent light. (BZZZT!) I visit bedrooms wearing perfume and dust. I visit highways as a deer-shaped doubt in the lane. (SCREECH!) I sit in nursing homes with soft hands folded, listening to old names float up like bubbles from a drowned town. (POP! POP!) I never mock the dying. No. I am polite. I pull out the chair. I whisper, "You've been expected." (WELCOME HOME!) But the wicked? (HEH-HEH!) The wicked hear me differently. For them, my footsteps have teeth. (CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!) Their walls sweat. Their locks cough open. Their sins crawl from under the bed wearing the faces of everyone they broke. (SURPRISE!) I make no threats. I only point. The grave does the speaking, and it has a voice like soil filling a mouth. Run if it comforts you. (RUN! RUN!) Slam the door, stack furniture, call every god by every nickname you know. I will still be there between the second and third ring, behind the dial tone, under the floorboard, inside the pause before the doctor speaks. (HELLO?) I never miss appointments. Tonight, I am not at the window. (NO.) I am not in the closet. (WRONG.) I am not beneath the bed, grin full of grave dirt. (CHECK AGAIN!) I am closer. I am the cold bead on your spine. I am the thought that makes the room feel occupied. I am the black feather turning in your throat. And when the lights snap out—(BANG!)—don't scream too loud. I hate chasing echoes. (SEE YOU SOON.)
