In the house of shadows

where the windows peek out with black irises,

where the grass is mowed silently,

where winter is harbored even in the dance of summer,

the people who live there go unseen, 

their movements chained to the inner shadows 

from which the home gets its name.

I wonder if they watch me as I walk the dog

slowly by their house, my eyes furrowed,

The infinite squint puckered into my brow

Trying to peel back the shade entombed within the walls.

Is the darkness there eternal? 

Is it inked into their blood?

Is their sadness true ethereal,

Waves of mist and sadness done?
Do they laugh with calm resilience

In the face of utter hate?

or do they sit their painfully

Their hearts bleeding from a stake?

As the family which resides there sees no

light from sunshine day

and the strangers who obsess

bolster rumors on the fray,

the darkness drowns them fully, 

slight movement in through the glass,

and the windows of their darkness 

leave their world unharassed.

They live in utter darkness, unknown to you or me

But they are calm in their quiet 

as their black flowers 

grow and sway.

The world around them stills as the unknowing seeps deep.

The hound and I walk on hoping God above can see

through the house of shadows

where the laughter is a silence

and any sign of life is the graveyard of the conscious.