a mother can be a monster when she has needles for teeth and cuts your face open when she kisses your cheeks and sews them back together, over and back again. because she braids your hair so tight it rips your skull like teddy bear flesh, (all soft from the lipstick skinned child love from your little brother, smelling of his baby spit and dust bunnies) but like I said you rip open.
you leak stuffing, and she spits her sour wine spit into your hair for not being able to keep yourself together,
when she tells you to bring your brother some milk for his nightmares and when you walk into his room he screams at your face. reverberating into a film noir, horror flick that teen hearts race to, secrete fluid to, you are the monster. you are the creature feature angry, wild eye boys overstep their bounds to at the drive in. you are the acre of corn maze kids are getting lost in on Halloween night, you are the yelp when the lights go out and he puts his tongue in.
the fake blood is gushing, the twins are asking if you want to play. no one can tell the ingenue's scream from some slut in a broken down truck.
your googly teddy bear eye is popping out by a rusted spring. you look like the black and white Frankenstein your brother cried to with your fathers hand keeping his twisting neck still. to make him a man. for the greater good, that loves the ready made microwaveable skin of young boys. and you big sister, taller than the tree he climbs, you used to put peroxide on his bleeding chubby knees.
you let him fall now, your winter branches weak from the arthritic rain falling from crying stars with daggers in their white knuckles. heaven is poisoning us tonight.
who is protected? who is just lost? I'm asking because I see his pubescent emotions weigh on you like the Christmas lights flickering out beneath the heavy snow. our tree is naked and shivering, it's leaves like impulsively cut hair falling across the cold mud flesh, and freezer burnt feet.
you let him fall. you gave him scars. everybody always says you've got your mothers eyes, and you're a monster so why don't you, I mean
why don't you just dig in?
