The Leaking Faucet

Ngô Bình Anh Khoa

Drip, drip, drip, drip. The leaking faucet cries
Into the silence of the witching hour,
Whose haunting, taunting echos fast devour
The young man’s tattered sanity. His eyes,
Once more pried open by those cursed sounds, stare
Into the darkness looming overhead,
Which fills his mind, deprived of sleep, with dread
As swirling shadows conjure strange shapes there.

Drip, drip, drip, drip. The leaking faucet rings,
Whose maddening noises slowly overtake
His thoughts as he lies, paralyzed and awake,
Tormented by the melody that brings
Up memories long since buried in his mind;
The wall he has erected wilts away,
And he soon finds himself a hapless prey—
Once freed, now in its cage once more confined.

Drip, drip, drip, drip. The leaking faucet screams
Inside his eardrums ’till all he can hear
Is its unending dripping thundering near,
And in his mind, the running water seems
To turn into a striking shade of red—
Red like his mom’s stained lips, red like her blood
That dripped down from the knife he held. The flood
Of memories gushes forth and fills his head.

Drip, drip, drip, drip. The leaking faucet shrieks.
Drip. Drip. Drip! Drip! The blood-drops drip, drip, drip!
The kitchen knife weighed heavy in his grip!
His mother, eyes wide open, did not speak.
She did not rise to hit or tear him down
Or punch or scratch or throw her things. Instead,
She lay, her neck a field of blossoming red
That dyed her ruffled and wine-scented gown.

Drip! Drip! Drip! Drip! The leaking faucet roars
Into his ears, his skull, his brain, his soul,
Eroding what remains of his control,
And he springs up. His hands, which he abhors,
Are stained in red beneath the moonlight pale—
The thickened red, the sticky red, the foul
And evil red that makes him thrash and howl,
Trapped once more in this hell. In vain he flails.

Drip! Drip! Drip! Drip! The leaking faucet bursts
Into shrill screams in his mom’s cruel voice
Besieging him. The noise. The noise! The noise!
“Why? Why? Why? Why?” It echoes like a curse
That stabs his chest and rips his heart apart.
His limbs (his own no more) drag him toward
The kitchen counter where the knives are stored,
Which he can use and from this hell depart!

Drip! Drip! Drip! Drip! The leaking faucet laughs
At him for his own weakness, for his sin,
For this hole that he dug and now lies in!
Oh how it chides and mocks and scoffs and laughs!
His vision blurs, and with a frenzied cry,
He puts the blade against his neck and prays
His mom would leave him be! Oh how he prays
The goddamn noises, at long last, shall die.

Ngô Bình Anh Khoa is a teacher of English from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In his free time, he enjoys reading fiction and writing speculative poems, some of which have previously appeared in Star*Line, Weirdbook, Spectral Realms, Liquid Imagination, and other venues.

“The Leaking Faucet” by Ngô Bình Anh Khoa © 2023