Do you feel

something?

Feel the water drip

down your bare arms

As you sluggishly brush your tainted teeth

Grip and cup your elbows

Trying to stop the water from

dripping

onto the bloodstained table

That was furnished with your dead mother’s hair

painted

red with webbed hands

With her crippling claws

skin sewn and held together by your mother’s dying words

She

saw herself in

You

Praying, wishing, yearning that

You would become the little girl

That she never could’ve been

With a dead mother at

Only seventeen

She could only be the second

Second

Second in everything

But you were her first

Her first

First born

The first thing that she had ever won

She had won

The lottery

Yet behind those firsts were

The seconds and thirds

over and over

She sunk

Crippled claws into that same

Fair china doll

That she had won

The same night she forgot

Her own name

You

Sang and you sang

Hollered into the well filled to the brim

With her blood, sweat, and tears

Salvaging through the

Tyranny

Searching for the gold

That you were so sure was

Buried

Yet you found

Nothing

You were gold

Until the day her sickness ticked off

And she torched you all around

Until you were a melted pool of nothingness