The faceless child came down as weight, as tide,
the mattress cupping what it could not name;
she was no comfort, no familiar guide,
but terror breaking over all the same.
You lay transfixed; the dark a second skin
that pooled around her, smooth and polish-blind—
her face a shell the night kept closing in,
a blank that gave you nothing to divine.
You prayed for sleep to pull you from that shore,
to let the body loosen, drift, go slack;
instead, a too-large hand filled up the door
and scattered golden ash above the child’s back.
The dust fell once. The room did not protest.
By morning, only one of us was left.