It came with the inheritance. The couch,
the house, the way the floorboards hold a creak.
I didn't see it at first — it learned to crouch
inside the cushions, patient, dark, antique.
It lives where I sit down to rest. It waits.
I've felt it shift beneath me, tail half-raised,
when I forget to guard, when I debate
whether the silence means I'm safe or grazed.
It likes my home. It's made my home its own.
The venom's in the fabric now, the thread.
I could tear out the couch, strip to the bone —
but where would I sit then? Where rest my head?
My grandfather sat here. My father too.
The scorpion remembers. It knows what's due.