I am listening to my parents arguing downstairs by Alisa Chamberlain

Cooking oil laces the stove, something disrupting

The homely kitchen below the ground I rely on for safety.

A desperate scream let out by the most gruesome

Banshee graces my ears in a way that causes me to jump.

I shiver, as loud cries drift up from the kitchen below,

Beasts awakening every time I ask any question.

The unstoppable force and immovable object meet,

Once again, chipping paint off the walls with their bare voices.

Unable to sit still, I pace the dusty floors of my chamber,

Which was once a room, at a time I can remember only faintly.

As the wailing grows and fades, and grows again,

Accompanied by the deepest harmony, trading places every couple of minutes.

The two creatures cannot seem to find solace within themselves.

I continue pacing as I stare out at the murky duskiness developing

Over the surface of my neighbor’s artificial pond.

I can feel my lungs rise and fall at the growing pace

Of a racehorse anxiously pawing the ground, waiting to exit its crate

Just as the plastic ones which once brought me solace

Now rattle on my bedroom’s nightstand

Ready to implode with the energy held inside,

Ready to ride out into the night,

The darkness and hungry monsters less terrifying

Than the ones butting horns in the kitchen of disarray

but the hooves are trapped on a worn nightstand, directly above

As the two creatures fighting bar any innocent from passing.

Hooves quake as the rift at the heart of my home expands,

Thunder overpowering the bitter darkness outside,

Lightning frying the trees outside,

Breaking the glass from the inside of my once-living room,

Bright lights and clashing sounds roaring against each-other,

Creating whirlwinds that turn what was once a home

Into an empty house, animals hiding in dusty, ransacked crannies

As the two banshees in the kitchen wave wildly.

For all I know, they could’ve been practicing a funeral song,

A dirge only meant to be heard by fellow omnipresent ghosts

Something I intrude on without knowing.

I hear a blunt thok as something metal graces the kitchen tiles.

The wailing intensifies as if a bomb dropped, a shard of metal

Twisting and scraping the insides of the banshee’s rotting hearts

Cutting through their jagged white flesh as if they still lived.

My pacing ends as I hear one of them lose their war,

Flying away amidst the destruction of the kitchen below me,

Evading the shrapnel behind the front door. Slam.

One last shriek, and utter silence devours me and my moonlit study.