No Title For Life

They invited me into a sparsely lit room, where the cracks between the curtains resembled hands searching for someone to hold

I watched as he slowly descended those decrepit stairs, rubbing his bruised wrists with an ointment pungent of sour oranges

His gaze was fixed on himself, as if to tell the room this was his domain before looking at me in my cautious eyes, three steps above

He took out his rusted, thin-lined smudged spectacles from his chest pocket to gaze at my soul as if searching for something no one else had seen before

And in a raspy broken voice that concluded he drew from his mahogany pipe more than his throat had liked, he asked; “Do you wish to join this house?”