i.
“What is a Monster?”
you ask Mother.
She wraps you in teeth, tendrils,
smiles,
and silence.

ii.
“Am I a Monster?”
you ask Mother,
carrion curdling
in the gaps between fingertips and fingernails.
You are old enough now to lick them clean yourself.

She is quiet
as her head probes the corpse-cave,
questing, searching.
Her scalp is bald,
lined with wrinkles like runnels.
Blood and viscera
are not what clog her ears
like honey,
like sweetened hope.

iii.
On her pyre
your tears, heavy with age,
dissolve her makeup.
Knife-rips, bullet-bites
older than your memory
smile under your grief.
“What are these?”
you ask no-one.
“Who gave her these?”
you wonder
as flames buoy her away.