something wicked

By the pricking of my thumbs,something wicked this way comes.Open, locks, whoever knocks!— The Second Witch, MacbethThere are seasons when the world announces itself long before it arrives.I have developed a sixth sense over the years. I know when darkness is on the move. Not the ordinary sort that evening brings, nor the kind that yields to sleep, but the heavier darkness that settles quietly inside a person until it begins to eclipse everything else.It never announces itself with trumpets. It arrives in whispers.It is there in the way my love moves through the house, as though gravity has quietly been increased. It hangs like a thin veil across his eyes. It steals his appetite, pares away his weight, loosens his grip on ordinary things. It is there, most painfully, in the slow disappearance of trying.I have watched this enemy advance before.Every time, I convince myself that perhaps I am mistaken—that I am reading too much into ordinary tiredness, ordinary sadness. Every time, that…