Laying back down
I fail to sleep.
My thoughts ticking
through twilight’s hours.
Instead I stir,
my mind too perturbed,
disturbed at the fact
that in that video…

I recognize its setting.

An abandoned powerline post
behind a low rolling hill
of a grass plain rimmed by trees
near a creek
with a broken sign.

This is all I dream about.
I can’t place my finger on where
This exact location is.
But

“Please don’t let it be nearby.”

Shaking off these thoughts
I rose up to prepare
for my day at work.

I clean my home
I dress myself.
and with time to spare
And a mind of a-buzz with black
white
and plenty of daylight hours

I’m back in my den.
I re-watch the beginning of the
first of four NO tapes
to affirm the location
I dream about.
It’s the same.

Then
the second of four
tapes played.
My mind photo-scan
each film-grained frame

Back in that same location,
at the same rolling hill
with the same abandoned
powerline post behind it
by the same creek with
the same broken sign
of the same picnic
from the first video.

I see two men walking
around the camera
arguing. About what,
I don’t know for
the sound is muffled

They poke at each other
until, from the upper left
a darkness, a distortion
of branches ink Its
limbs over picture frames
oozing outward
like a gaping claw
spider-webbing the footage.

Blanking I notice a third
shadow behind the camera
before it falls over
recording the men’s feet
striding away before the
frames fuzzes and

Scheeeeeessssshhhh

I pounce to my feet
Staring at the buzzing screen.

Dark branches ink
limbs, webbing my ceiling
my furniture and
my home decor in
my right peripheral.

Blanking
I snap my
vision toward the
webbing to find
the film grained creature,
but It is not there.

My front door is open.

“Did I leave it open after I watered the flowers?”