BILE AND DAMNATION
I am the daughter of contracts made with blackened breath.
Upon my skin I bare the marks of mother - acidic and scaring.
Though I stand proud, I too must adhere, and I do, incessantly.
Every day, at noon and again under the cover of night, silk like fingers slip over my sponge like tongue.
Clause 3 subsection b
I have never read it but I have heard it and through my tongue it was absorbed and though I’ve never spoke it, it sits behind my eyes and whispers terrible lies;
So every day at noon and again under the cover of night I make my sacrifice.
Did mother know?
When she agreed, did mother know?
It worked for mother, for a while.
The social currency she held, toyed with, exploited was intoxicating.
Until it didn’t - until it wasn’t. She turned to God and the contract was broken and the intoxication of male validation and female envy was replaced by velvety red wine cascading into a putrid pit.
She knew.
Her and her unborn daughter were damned. But most women are.
Contracts made with blackened breath claw at my neck and I must uphold.
Noon, night.
Bile bites back. I go again.
Mother slurs together another clause about how He likes our bones and I’d heard it before but my stomach was empty and aching for more so indulge again and absorb, absorb, absorb.
Claws free sub something C...
And it was delicious.
And He curled His toes and He traced my bones and He peaked out from behind my eyes and whispered noon, night for you’d make a lovely wife.
Mother was smaller than me. My frame larger and I think that’s because she broke the rules and when He jumped from her to me He grew and I had to house Him somehow so I grew too.
Daughter of a scared girl - she wanted beauty. Did her mother know? She made deals, are they acidic? Are they mine?
My insides pay the price for my ritualistic sacrifice, noon, night. And I am not as beautiful as mother but that is my cross to bear as He threatens my crucifixion if I so much as dare.
But I did dare and I slip fingers, under the cover of night, around mothers neck and think for a moment - is this what I want?
Is a contract still binding when she’s torn in two?
It was 7pm on a Thursday night and it was no surprise the way in which I held the knife to mothers bare breast. Deliver me to life, milky and sweet, treacle mouthed but already beat. Shall I surrender? Body whole and weak and strung up in blood-soaked articles.
Turn to God; turn into God – turn sharpened steal in to imperfect skin. Turn blood into wine. Turn your contracts into mine.
It was savoury and then He blazed, joyous.
Mothers skin and the blade covered in a moralists nightmare and my hands impure.
Bitter, bitter blood began to flow, absorbed by my clothes and she opened her eyes one last time and my stomach became hers and we shared the putrid pit and I believe I knew. Before I even carried through there was knowledge. I had already upheld the edifice in my daily surrender. And now I know.
Daughter of a dead woman. She, mother, was that of a girl who signed her soul away.
And my insides pay the price for my ritualistic sacrifice, noon, night,
I have made a lovely wife.
I play into His hand and I rot.
He spits the name of my unborn daughter onto the dotted line
which once was mine.
Nothing could save us now.
Memento mori was stamped with a hot iron onto my chest and in my hands I held a cup of sin, sticky and black, like tar and in the end I wasn’t even promised a place in Hell.
She was,
I am,
She will be,
a daughter of contracts made with blackened breath.
Kate Easlea, 22, Sydney - Australia ✯ IG: @uninspired.heather
“Kate Easlea, sometimes Kate Heather. 22 yrs old. Residing in Sydney, Crookwell and the trainline between.”