Literally: bound in metal


There’s a Japanese word for it. English

needs one—the closest we get is sleep paralysis.

It doesn’t do it justice. The crushing weight
of a demon on your chest, immovable fingers

clamping your throat, your mind

as wild as your body is helpless.
Kanashibari. I’m here because of it. Four

in the morning, after the fear. It lets you up

eventually. And when it did, I had to move,
had to get out of the coffin I’d tucked myself into.

Pace the hallway, freed. There’s a dead rat caught

beneath the floorboards of my flat. There’s a man next door
whose body is eating him alive. I walk to the kitchen

because I can. Write these words

because the internet’s down, because for once
I’m unable to tweet about it. There isn’t a word

to express this impulse: something to say

but no one to say it to, self-disgust
at this glib dependence, these tiny fragments

strung out behind me. Poems lost and stories unwritten

while I feed the hungry bird. Pressed down
in suffocation, both fighting and complicit,

so tiny, this hourglass we’re given at birth,

so reckless we are with the sand.