A demon stands on my shoulders, weight like a second spine, knees hooked over my collarbones, breathing slow against my neck.
It doesn’t speak. It doesn’t need to. Its silence is the heaviest thing I’ve ever carried.
Some nights I try to shrug it off, roll my shoulders, crack my neck, but it only settles deeper, like it was grown there.
I used to think it was a curse. Now I think it’s just a passenger that learned my routes before I did.
It knows which doors I won’t open. It knows which ones I will.
And when I finally fall asleep, it climbs down, quiet as a shadow, and sits beside my bed like a dog that never learned to leave.