Unwanted Vistor

You came without knocking.
a shadow slipping through my door.
No warning just silence heavy enough to break the clock’s heartbeat.
I had set the table for tomorrow.
You swept it clean.
Chairs left aching for bodies that will never return.
Your hands are colder than any winter I have known.
They touch without asking and steal without shame.
Folding the living into a stillness too vast to name.
I begged you to pass me by and to walk another road but you lingered.
You wore no face and yet I knew you.
You are the storm that bends the spine of every tree.
The tide that swallows even the strongest swimmer.
You do not choose you take.
Still in your silence I hear the faintest mercy.
The end of pain.
But mercy is not comfort when the chair across the room is empty
When a name becomes only an echo.
You will always be unwanted yet always returning.
The guest who never leaves
the shadow that waits behind every door.