Being B

I am the thought at the back of your mind.
I am the reason you sometimes glance over your shoulder in an empty room.
There is no-one there you think with a shudder,
This is not true. I am here. I am always here.

I am the thought at the back of your mind.
I lodged in you some years ago now, as my kind is wont to do,
as you were about to enter your seventh year,
I have been here ever since.

I am the thought at the back of your mind.
I am your guilty conscience and the sudden sense of shame and uselessness which takes you over on a dark winter's night.
I am the nagging doubt you will ever be good enough,
The one who will trip you into the arms of betrayal.

I am the one relishes both your pleasure and your pain, your guilt and disgust.
The one who makes you drink the extra glass of wine and scoff the last cake.
I am fed by your happiness, but I am nourished by your failure.
You are a feast and I am what you would call a glutton or a slob.

I am the thought at the back of your mind.

I have always been here. We have always been here.
Please don’t feel picked upon.
We are numerous and we are in all of you.
We are eternal.

Being B

I watched Pompeii erupt. I watched Hiroshima burn.
I swam in the earliest primordial soup, then spent a million years passing from Pterodactyl to T-rex (which don’t look anything like the things in your pictures and your films).
But, they never nourished us like you do.
Those unsubtle beasts, now dust, were a mere snack.

Once you appeared, my brothers and sisters and I, we never looked back.
You were the feast which never ran empty,
The wine glass which magically refills,
And the only one with a hangover is you.

I am the thought at the back of your mind.
You are both my carriage and my meal,
You are the conduit of my hopes and dreams, fragile and temporary
You are Being B.