Should her words lull you like a sleep-time song,
whispering lists of the things you have missed,
and murmuring all you might yet become,
her name is already carved on your ribs.
Like her psalms, your eyelids will grow heavy.
Verging on sleep, you will try to swallow
depraved desires to pay her levy,
then sapped, sink into collarbone hollows—
never deep enough to drown her demands.
She has twisted her scriptures through your veins.
A marionette dancing on command,
wooden jangle of bones, jerking on chains.
Far better you silence her from the start.
Gut her like a fish, dispose of the heart.