THE SHADOW OWNER'S COMPANION Poem by Eleanor Hooker

Solitary. She's been around for so long now, we simply
co-exist. I know she's there. At night she rocks in the left
corners of our bedroom; her chair held together with my fear
of the dark. She stays there, mostly, in the dark. Sometimes,
she sleeps at the bottom of the lake. She wakes me in my dreams
and I ignore her, but then she does her special trick; hovers just
above me, her weight not on me. I spoon up to you, ‘I'm frightened,' I say,
‘mind me'. And you warm me not to tell. My dreams, they frighten
you too. I won't look at her; I know she could never be unseen, unheard of,
for ever and ever.