The Monster at Night

It comes only at night,
When you're alone and vulnerable.
It's dressed as every dark and ugly thing
You've ever done or thought or feared
It follows where ever you go,
Menacingly lurking in the shadows.
It has no name and no face
But it doesn't need one
The terror in implores is grave enough without
But I feel a presence so sinister
The devil calls it Master
It hovers above your bed screaming
Till your ears are bleeding and you feel
Like there's no breath left in your lungs
Come with me, you don't belong here
You will never be good enough
Never be good at all
You are evil and disgusting
You are only at home
Once you take my hand
My world is yours and yours is mine to haunt
The knots in your stomach ache
You're sweating
You're heart and mind are racing
But you can't escape this torture
You can cry and plead but It will always return
Every night when you're alone
When you lay in bed
Praying for sleep to fall upon your head
It will pluck you from every semblance of peace
Every happy memory
Every hope for the future
Every person you love
Imagine the most heart wrenching truth
The worst of every scenario
Death, famine, disaster
Now concentrate only on those things
Things so psychotic and vile
You'll question how you could possibly be a good person
Let your most grotesque thoughts
Become your only thoughts
Horrible enough to make you wince in pain
Make your chest tighten
There is no beauty anywhere around you
It has stolen it all
Feel the consequences of everything
You've ever done wrong
Come crashing down on you
Like a tidal wave
Unforgiving and overwhelming
Drown in the mistakes
The what ifs
The what if I hadn'ts
It wants you to regret the day you decided to live
It wants you to beg for relief
Plead for mercy
Cry for death
Then and only then will It let you be free
No words are existent
To describe the tole it takes on a soul
The amount of practice required
To hide from everyone
The parts of oneself so distorted
So hated and feared
More days than not do you consider
Letting it consume every inch
Just giving in to the every looming presence that has come to define every night
You think how serene it would feel
How joyful a night in heaven without demons
How beautiful the stars might appear
But it wants to destroy those things now
There are none after you make that choice.
As dark as it all seems now
There is no light in that world either.
You're trapped in a never ending contradiction
Stay and fight everyday for your sanity
Hanging on only by the skin of your grinding teeth
Or lose yourself in the madness and be forever lost in an inescapable hole.
That is what I live with, this is the secret I keep.