I glance around the table, surprised to find a feast laid before me. There are bowls full of berries and jams. Plates stacked with pancakes and waffles. A pot full of roast and potatoes. A stack of burgers and a bowl of salad. Full roasted chickens steaming with herb-infused juices.

My mouth waters with anticipation. It's as if I haven't tasted food in days. I'm ravenous. I reach out across the table to grab a plate full of spicy-scented sausages, but as I lean forward something falls onto my plate. I glance down and shriek as a cockroach scurries across the dish, over the table, and out of sight.

I catch my breath before leaning forward again to grab at a plate of cheeses, but again something falls to my plate, followed by another and another. I look down only to find three cockroaches desperately trying to escape. I look up, searching for the source of the falling bugs, but find nothing.

I suck in a breath, a tickling sensation at the base of my neck freezing me in place. I quickly reach up to swipe it away, but before my fingers even make contact I already know what it is. It's as if this one movement has prompted the little terrors into action, and suddenly my scalp comes alive with a scratchy, crawling sensation as the horrifying bugs emerge from hiding. I can feel them winding their way through the strands, their small feet clinging to the skin that houses my roots.

I begin to tremble as they scurry out of my hair and down my back, my neck, my face, my arms. I'm swatting desperately for them to vanish, but they just increase in number. They're pouring out of my hair like theater popcorn spilling over the edges of the machine. I can't see as they run across my face, blinding me. I jump from my seat and shake my head upside down but they cling to me.

A scream erupts from my lungs as one, then two, three cockroaches find the entrance and scuttle into my mouth. I fall to the ground as they take over my body. Tremors wrack through my limbs as I shrivel up into a ball and allow myself to be completely consumed.

I woke last night at half-past three

from such a strange nightmare,

of shopping at our local mall

in just my underwear!

Somehow, in this state of undress,

my wife I’d followed there.

She kept insisting it was time

to buy new underwear!

In panic, I searched wildly ’round,

as people stopped to stare;

I then looked down. Relieved, I found

I’d worn clean underwear!

Outside the lingerie store now,

a chill rose in the air;

the laughing crowds all pointed at

holes in my underwear!

The thing which brought anxiety,

(my wife seemed not to care),

was that there was no dressing room

to change my underwear!

Then worst of all, I felt a slap

upon my derriere;

my wife just winked and leered at me,

now, sans my underwear!

I woke next to my snoring wife--

sleeping without a care.

She must be dreaming of shopping...

but not in underwear!

(c) 2017 - dustygrein

** Note: This is a modified kyrielle, in iambic common meter. This meter is composed of a tetrameter line (4 iambs) followed by a trimeter line (3 iambs).