Knife Demon
She hugs her knees, teeth chattering from the frigid air.
Sitting upon her mother’s altar, the plump Buddha grins at her from across the bathroom, golden skin and pearly white teeth, rolls of fat and a ballooning belly.
His meant fortune, but hers meant disgrace.
Hidden by the huge black fabric swathed around her body
Angry red on pale skin
Cross hatched lines from two different times
Too close to each other,
The first still fresh, no time to heal and scar.
Across from her sat another, through a dirty reflected screen, but vicious nevertheless.
Her bushy eyebrows narrowed, zeroing in.
Fear consumed the girls heart, knowing she had been discovered.
Yet time froze, her limbs became stone and her brain shut down.
Flying from the looking glass, the predator leapt.
Supper time, and this time she was eating good.
Fields of fresh produce, so innocent and untouched. An oasis, hidden at the very center of the slow, dredged body, that if one looked hard enough,
Could find.
But was it really worth the chase?
Her long, red claws extended, fire to forest, and she screeched out in a hellish hurrah.
Pure bliss overtook her as the tiny red strawberries burnt to ash, and the baby bluebirds choked, their little bodies writhing on the ground.
More, more. She needed more fuel.
Come on, you aren’t worth it. You’re not worth anything. Let me burn within your heart, forever, so you can never be hurt. Ever again.
No one will ever love you.
No one will ever see anything in you.
No one will ever value your life.
So why continue fighting on?
Already your fat fingers and bulging thighs weigh you down, and your sagging stomach frowns at all that try to approach you.
It’ll never get better. Just give up.
Give into the fire.
Give the world what they deserve, then escape.
Escape with me on a fire chariot and we can fly to the sun, and leave this place forever.
Fly like the bluebirds, to a place as sweet as strawberries.