In Youth

I am born, and I am a lamb. The most tender and mild of all creatures, swaddled and writhing in my mother’s clutches. Sillily in bliss, in this indefinite moment.

Had I been a fortune teller, I would have sunk my claws into the walls of my mother’s womb to keep from coming out, would have held the embryonic sac tightly shut around myself. Some do. Some smarter than I.

My mother licks her sin off my skin. With a twitch of tongue, licks turn to whispers. She whispers to ward off the crying. Whispers of all I will be, all I can be, all I must be. Whispers that say: I am cursed to be just as she is. I don’t yet understand what that means.

My eyes ask and are answered by one word. Soon. It slithers from the shadow of a whisper. The word sticks in the air, creates a gross humidity. And, at once, I am aware of the feces surrounding us, the rest of the herd outside, their loud bleats, the illness in the midnight air, the cold.

Rest, I am instructed. So, I indulge. I dream of wildflowers blooming in fresh snow, staining the surface, such little perfect impurities.

Born from blood, I am as pale as soft winter flurries.

×

I am twelve, and I am a lamb. A lamb with hips and breasts, standing upright on wobbling hind legs. No longer sillily in bliss, but foolishly oblivious. Oblivious to the gazes. Gazes that follow swaying hips. Hips that don’t intentionally sway but bridge the uneven gap between buckling knees and too-long limbs. Hips that are just bones and fat.

Gazes attached to sickly brains, assuming I must be fully grown, body filled out, or not. Gazes which refuse to pay attention to my unblemished skin, displaying my age just as rings on a chopped tree. The skin of a lamb, either ignored or sought after in a slurry of guilt and pleasure.

My mother notices the gazes. Through sharpened teeth, she once again warns of wickedness and wolves and all that is not only out there, but coming, inevitable. I listen.

I do not hear.

I am too busy comparing my flat wiggling teeth to her stained canines. I picture them punctured through me, limbs distorted, stretched in ways they are not meant to be stretched. There is no blood, because they are not meant to harm. Only meant to hold

me

still for the slaughter.

×

I am fourteen, and I am a lamb. A lamb wounded and bleeding. My mother reminds me this will happen again in a repeating loop of eternity. What a funny thing, to be granted an eternity of suffering.

My mother warns how my scent will change, how the harmless gazes become dreadful bites, how I will only suffer more.

Warn. Remind. Warn. Remind. Warn. Remind.

And I listen—and I feel.

Wan. Resent. Wan. Resent. Wan. Resent.

The wolves bite at my hooves and howl at my doorstep.

Mother is pleased. Glad that I am hunted after. Glad that I do not face a fate far worse.

I learn how to recognize the gaze, how to pick out eyes from a flock, how to see through the back of my head. I cower

and I run.

But I cannot run forever      or even far       before—

Mother catches me in her claws. Claws? I cannot recall when her hooves began curling

underneath themselves. They fray in places, threaten to puncture the skin, but they only leave

soft pink marks. Lip-sticked kisses, such an interesting remnant of her love.

She paints me as the picture of virtuous vitality. As though I sway like a sapling, as though I drip

like sweet summer fruit.

×

I am seventeen, and I am a lamb?

Blood.

Blood leaks from every orifice. So easy, it stains pale fluff. The blood of

my mother

and her mother

and every mother

before. This blood cannot be tenderly licked away by a truthful tongue. This stains past the skin

and will remain

and remain 

and I must repent, I am told.

But how shall I repent when the world already has me on my knees? How shall I speak when I am muzzled? How shall I repent while the shepherds’ hands hold my head in place? How shall I move when revolting paws keep me from even squirming? How shall I repent when the wolves hold my limbs in place? How should I repent?

When everything threatens to tear them, my limbs, all of me, clean off?

I am told to feel guilt. Guilt over my averted eyes. Guilt because I am now bare as Eve. Guilt because my supple skin is now bruised a bile yellow. Guilt because it is my own blood I am swaddled in now.

And lambs are not red.

×

I am twenty-two, and I am no longer a lamb. No longer sought after by shepherds and wolves.

Because I am beyond saving and beyond being longed after.

Because I am tagged.

Because I am no longer deemed soft, supple, and ripe.

My body is decomposing before me. No, not decomposing. Tearing. Wool is shredding

from my skin again

and again. My once soft skin oozes puss. In the spot where the infection eats at my womanhood.

What skin isn’t torn apart by man is stretched and pulled by me. First to examine, then to

demolish. Chipped nails yank out long hair and eyelashes. They make their way to my abdomen and tear out my innards.

Because I want to pull out my intestines and untangle the knot they are in.

Because: if I replace them, then will I be someone new?

My hooves are not quite sharp enough. But my teeth have fallen out of my head. And sharp points protrude from my gums below. Skeletons reaching out of their graves.

Today I will cover myself with a burlap sack.

Black sheep are not born, they are created, and blood dries darker than it runs.

×

I am twenty-nine, and I am a mother. A mother sheared and stuck and bled a million times over.

My skin is heavy, sagging off the bone. I am told this. My tongue is sore from screaming but I will clean guts off of my child anyway,

my child          ignorant to the wickedness.

I know I have been given a daughter—she is born crying. Gating away the flooding relief and guilt of her gender, I decide to cherish this indefinite moment. I lick her tears away, and it mixes with the blood in my throat. Salt and iron, a bitter communion behind the lips.

Soft whispers leak from me and spill into her ears, spreading the infection of truth. I warn her

that the crying born from the womb will be carried to her grave.

My brain plagues me, leaks out of my ears. Maybe this one will not suffer as the rest. But the moment the thought fills my consciousness, I know I am wrong.

And then, I prepare to throw this small soft mass to the wolves.

×

I am forty-seven, and I am a monster. This I am told. A horrific mass of thick blood and steel wool. Debris sticks out in places where barbed wire hasn’t ripped my hair from the root.

Blood no longer oozes from open wounds or down my legs. Only from my mouth, gallons of it, staining my teeth yellow, red lives in the spaces between my sharp points.

I am a behemoth,

and my ribs are an iron cage.

There is no trace of the nursing lamb that once was. Which may still be? It does not matter what

was or is or will be because

buried beneath wool, no one will ever see.

Maybe that’s the point. I am a monster that has suffered. A monster that has killed. A monster

that has mourned.

I am a monster, and I am tired.