We're All Mad Here

Madness did not arrive in the form of shackles and screaming tirades.
Instead it crept up, much like a lost kitten, mewling for comfort in the dark.
It purred softly, rubbing and playfully batting.
Before long it was as if it had always been there, swishing its tail.

It wasn't always this way; we were not always this way.
The shifting of the sunlight through the windows shaped the shadows between us.
The soft lilt of a nightingale silenced the questions we never meant to ask.
The madness slipped through the door, its eyes blinking sweetness and confusion.

We danced our evenings to the muted sonatas inside our hearts.
We spun the stories of our whiskey-soaked nightmares onto our skin.
We traced the scars of the sickness into our faces and our minds.
We shaved our heads, cracked open our skulls to dig out the memories.

Madness arrived; without fanfare or a bottle of wine.
It came while we were away, on holiday somewhere far from home.
It was sly and we were lost and wandering in a loblolly before we knew it.
A bottle marked "poison" tasted like custard and we did not resist.