when the child tugs at my apron strings,
what is my name but satan.
mistress river acid,
strip my legs of their skin with each step,
down to tendon, bone, and marrow.
i’ll wash up, limbless and parched.

we’ll stand, nubile and resplendent
beneath you while you sleep,
lobbing pebbles at your window,
while you’ll believe it to be rain,
commuting furtively into the pile of dead leaves
and crumpled tissues in the drain pipe.

you’ll ask us if we were there,
not believing voices beyond cave shadows.

we’ll lie, aged and eyelid heavy,
in sweet-earth-cupped-hands.

*~life's about to get real weird in the next ten seconds~