Changeling

I knew a brave girl.

In spite of all quicknesses and vivid determination

she lived and lived inside a dirty bubble of fear.

And how she could run a long, long road

faster than a blue fox,

light leaking from her head

into shapes of dead friends.

Sadness thrust itself like Hades’ hand

up from the ground as she ran. It

made her fall

It made her twist the other way.

He said:

“I will boil your bones

I will consume the broth

You exist only as my breath.”

Her shoes, the punishing molten iron

of the wicked. She wore them by mistake.

It was difficult, impossible. She kept

going anyway.

The thing that had gone wrong rang in

her brain. An alarm clock ticking life away. She was running

in her sleep. She never slept.

Its true she was stolen.

Thin shadow crack door

reached in long shadowy arm.

Yanked through the gold bars of the crib,

they left a feral baby with a ropey grip

who screamed and screamed and would not drink her milk.

Nursed by shades with whispering voices of smoke,

the rind of a human child congeals in the half-light.

A great hunger linked her to the child in the crib.

This body never received its guest. No sovereignty.

A hand grenade inserted in her hip.