Fraught

Fraught lived in a marsh among silver  
trees and rank waters the color of
milk. Skim and because skim sickly.
There she had a house, by which I mean
a box. Windowed. There she was the heart
at the very heart of it. She was beaten
I mean. Don’t get this wrong. No one
laid a hand on Fraught. The house kept her
close. They were like two branches
of a vagus nerve wandering in and out of
organs playing waking songs with leit-
motifs: eating and finding things to eat.
Fraught had difficulty with her s/kills
at first. But the house taught Fraught how
to mute distaste for blood and the things
she had to do to make blood flow. This was
a talent—same as beating, as being beaten
like leather for a drum. Same as luring a doe
a-lap with scavenged fruits to cause a sleep
deep enough to strangle without poisoning
because we should never taint the flesh
we will consume. The house taught Fraught
and Fraught believed because the house
was her body. You are supposed to believe
your body: it lives you. Fraught ate the pied
deer, and this pregnant dappled doe tasted
of cream and regret. Fraught gnawed on its raw
insides and inside, the fetal deer was neither
speckled nor dead. But it did die. And Fraught
ate the near-deer later, once she realized
she enjoyed the feel of not starving. Blood
is not cream though both can clot and stick.
Fraught is not fine. She is monster and every
albino doe a unicorn. This is how your virginity
is taken from you: you get too hungry and then
you kill. Blame the house if you must. Write
it in the third person. Call it mania or lust.
Hate yourself—whatever allows you to keep
living with what you do in order to live. Once
you are at peace with your unceasing, sow
the narrow bones and rename your grief.

Be Baba. Be Yaga.