The Thing

The Thing

In the pale glow of a forgotten harbour,
where cold iron waves drop silver bruises on the earth,
there lingers a shape, a silent, thin‑spanning hush—
the Thing that shivers beneath every shoreline’s breath.

It is not the kind of thing that we can name;
its breath is analysis of every being it grips,
a living smudge of winter and ghost, an outcrop of universe—
crystalline and cruel, as a serpent lies hidden in stone.

At night the harbour turns to a black balustrade,
and the Thing of the mist seeks to drag our certainty into the deep.
It knows the hollow in our own stance, the doubt that makes a heart throw ash,
and bites the edge of our certainty as if it were a digestive gut.

Brave hearts come with a glint of armour and the taste of doubt—
sudden, deadly, the wind carries its silent drum.
When the lights rise, we glimpse the edge:
the Thing, a tear in reality, and we, the small forgotten,
pleasingly burnt where we taste the strange.