Image courtesy of Alexander Andrews at Unsplash

For as long as I could remember, I feared the ostentiferous darkness where stars and gaseous dreams might fall from their vaulted beds, tangled in the sticky webs of myth, and memory. Unbeholden to the light of reason, these tenebrific blotches persisted as wild galactic scars, secrets whispered between old gods and entropic beasts who danced in the shadows as they cackled through the outré planes, bizarre chants smacking the black insanity. 

I recalled familiar names with which to address that most horrible, yet beautiful night. So many various figures concealed themselves betwixt the silky pages of history where through the shadows of someday I saw them in Nyx the goddess, Shalim the dusk, and even Nott whose mesonoxian grandmotherly appearance kept my fears at bay, for but a moment. 

And underneath the throbbing, pillowy breaths of an ancient sky, my body trembled with anxious dreams for as long as I could remember, I knew someday the night would bleed.  

[Maxwell I. Gold is a Rhysling and Pushcart award nominated prose poet who writes weird and cosmic horror. He is a regular contributor to Spectral Realms, and his work has also appeared in Weirdbook Magazine, Space and Time Magazine, Startling Stories, Baffling Magazine and many others. Maxwell has published over 100 prose poems and short stories since 2017. Recently his prose poetry collection Oblivion in Flux: A Collection of Cyber Prose was released from Crystal Lake Publishing and his prose poem ‘No More Prying Eyes’ will appear in the forthcoming anthology Shadow Atlas from Hex Publishers.]