Have been circling at a distance. Picked a title this week just to say hello again. Have been sorting out my own shadow creatures. No worries, there is room enough in cave for the occasional visitor. Just need to determine how hungry the beast may be and if there is enough in the fridge to go around.

Try as we might to seal the cracks, inevitably fear, sorrow, or the like seep through and we deal with it as you've stated and equated with "hummingbirds or beasts". When the cracks are infiltrated by voices, then it's another realm. Your poem captures these dilemmas by your knack to assemble ideas with imagery.

I'm a bit unfamiliar with mental illness, not possessing any of it that I know of. But what little I know is that some people are possessed by voices that tell them to do things. My assumption was that these voices are all human or mythological humans in the personage of something like, "the devil," made me do it?

Having animals (birds) invade one's personal space is a unique way of looking at it, but along the same vein. In the end of the story it becomes clear that the subject is talking to a psychiatrist. Like you stated in the opening, many people suffer from cracks in their persona that leak all kinds of bad thoughts. It must be terrible for these people to deal with life as difficult as it is just normally, to have these distractions as well. For some reason, I've found the most intelligent among us suffer the most from these mental anomalies.

The revelation in the end is interesting. So the guy thought he was special. Cute. So did Osama bin Laden.

Ron

Editorial notes: there is usually a comma before "too," that I often miss, too. And "… uniquely theirs."