Absent Together

It can only arrive when nothing else is there,
it can only survive when someone is there.

When it arrives she will be asleep,
it cannot allow her to awake or it
will fade in one quick cloud of shimmering smoke.
Irony for her sleeping quietly,
irony for the nightmare drilling its way passed the
skin and hair, a tiny insect viral and wicked,
more of human though, more persistent.
It found her quickly in her sleep, and she
yielded immediately to it. Her dream melted away
sunshine to water, verdant to stone, light to dark.
Till a tunnel emerged long and cold,
for her and the nightmare.
It was a strange sight to her.
It wore a hood that meshed with the gloom
it's body was wooden, carved, like an old mask
or puppet seen in some far corner of an old museum.
It was painted a pattern of mixed colors
bright and primary, it needed them for it's craft.
The eyes were hollow black and empty.
The face dark and concealed accept for its mouth
wooden, separate, like piano keys,
only they were blood colored.
It took her walking through the tunnel
and it spawned images along the walls
with its hands which were wooden and brittle.
They creaked under each movement.
Monsters,demons, dragons, fiends,
murder, treachery, tornadoes, earthquakes,
fires, wars, beasts, and devils in every window.
Each image was hazy and inarticulate,
like an oily painting in heat.
The girl pointed at them lazily with her small hand,
she was tired after all,
he other held tightly by the nightmare.
Till she found a portal to her liking where she
stepped into the tunnel and meshed into the wall gently,
a living tapestry of fear and fire.
Then it left her, long down the tunnel walking alone.
She would not remember picking the nightmare of her choosing,
but it would remember her.