I found the scrap beneath the rat-chewed sill,

ink slick as black sap across the plaster — feed it raw meat, it said,

and the stones around me breathed, a slow tallow-smelling hush.

By lamplight the vellum curled, mildew feathering its margins,

and I laid a strip of iron-warm flesh upon the sill;

the wall answered with a soft, wet shifting in the seams.

Soot sifted from the beams, the manor’s ribs creaked,

something threaded its tongue through the cracks,

and night after night I brought offerings,

until the stones grew patient — patient as prayer.

But on the seventh night I withheld my hand,

and the house began to listen differently:

the plaster puckered, breathing in, the air tasting of cellar ash,

a sound like a child learning to speak scraped forward in the mortar.

The floorboards bowed — hunger moving underfoot,

studying the shape of my steps —

I whispered miserere into the dark,

and the walls whispered it back, wrong, and nearer;

now the meat it wants is no longer in my hands,

and the stones have learned the path to where I sleep.