Bats

Its fur is patchy and ruffled like a mouse waking up from a long slumber.

There’s a piece of white string sewed, stuck somewhere in the back of the neck,

strung up like an insignificant birthday banner,

suspended over a wooden landscape of carcasses and skeletons,

replicas of those we know and those we no longer remember.

Its wings are now paper-thin and yellow with age like a leaf in autumn,

crumpling like a piece of parchment paper,

a feather quill of ink ready to prick the

transparent curtain between bone and vein.

An invisible breeze gives it momentum as it twirls

like a Halloween decoration the morning after a night of performance,

fangs poised and wings spread like a cape,

flapping at the children who so bravely rang the bell

to ask for more candy.

Now, this creature of the night is motionless.

Waiting inside a glass case in a small corner of a morbid room

for wondering, gasping eyes that are fascinated and repulsed all at once,

eyes that roam over the tiny bodies,

connecting its image to another creature of the night,

one more human in likeness,

preserved alongside each other in the history of literature.  

Bats have great hearing.

Bats are blind.

Bats drink your blood.

Bats

fly

in

your

hair.

‘Bats’ by Merlynn Spencer is a part of her debut collection, ‘Today is a Day for Hiding’ – available to buy on Amazon. 

Featured image by Clément Falize via Unsplash