And you say that I hurt you, in a voice like a prayer -- tarnished

[cellar]

When your mother tells you about your birth, she says it like myth,
like pain and blessings and something pink and precious.
She swallows hard as she enters the meadow with the scent of blood still clinging tightly to her like a scared child. Or maybe she's the one who's scared and she just doesn't dare to think of such things in this moment. The killing, it never gets any easier no matter how many times she watches the light in their eyes fade. You could almost hear the letters clinking together as she carried their names and copper tastes in her heart. Or maybe that's just the rain pattering around her, on her, in her.

Maybe she's shivering or maybe she just feels so unstable that it's playing tricks on her mind. Either way, she stands among the tall grasses as the night's storm drags itself lazy through the deep purple and navy sky overhead. She'd been able to hide herself completely in these grasses as a child, she recalls. Vulgaris had gotten so frustrated trying to keep up with her when the summer sparked life into her terrified bones. Oh, she'd wanted to play and dance with her father then. She'd only wanted his love and to be the apple of his granny smith colored eye.

But even now, he could catch her scent on the wind and she knows without searching that he'd run in the other direction. Her gray head hangs a little lower at this thought while the spring weather tries to wash away all the ink-black from her soul but there are some finger prints that just won't be moved. Still, she exhales and it feels like some of her demons are being exorcised. She has to start with the tiniest ones but that progress is just as good as any, she figures.

She gives her head a little shake so her forelock doesn't stick right there to the center of her face but rather hangs to the side. Despite, or rather in spite of, all that darkness, her eyes still hold a glimmer of that softness that she keeps tucked away from the world. There is still gentle life in the body of a killer.

CELLAR
She never tells you that you were born angry, with too many teeth.