#mothmother – A DAUGHTER OF MOTHS

I wasn’t born in the woods to be afraid. I know some things to be sacred, like being loved by a Romanian woman.

My body is burning with the desire to see my sisters again. The absence of their scent is making my heart sore. The last time I saw my darlings it was on my mother’s birthday. The sky was light blue, emptied of clouds. Mother’s brown eyes were wide open with joy, contoured by black eyeliner. She cried charcoal tears when we started singing for her, and my sisters and I kissed her wet lashes and sat her down, to bless her. We made a crown of wildflowers plucked from her garden and put it on her head and gathered in a circle around her, chanting ‘Regină, fii binecuvântată, căci noi suntem deja avându-te pe tine.’ We flexed our backs as if we were metamorphosing into serpents, allowing her eyes to follow us and control us like a Medusa would do with her snakes. I wish I could be under her kind spell right now, but I’m comforted by the thought of my skeleton being fractured soon by her long-yearned-for hug.

When I see my mother and sisters again, I will say to them ‘You have no idea how empty the streets in this town are without Romanian iele bringing light into this still life.’

My mother was a moth before she was a woman. In her short life as a moth, she met my father after a night of storms. She followed him day and night. She knew she couldn’t have him unless she became one of his kind, with hands and legs and a mouth with which she could kiss or whisper soothing words. So, she found this young woman who she entered through the nose and expanded inside of, until she became one with her. Soon after, my mother married my father and she birthed me. The woman who the vessel belonged to remained there, tucked in a corner of the skull. Mother felt her presence manifesting inside the body on rare occasions—a few times, at night, Mother found herself not in her bed, but wandering outside people’s houses, peeking inside, sobbing whilst she watched children sleeping. There was one time when the woman sharing that body with my mother tried to drown some children living across the street by forcing their heads into a sink full of water. Eventually, the woman gave up, as she had figured my mother was stronger, and she hasn’t made her presence felt ever since.

Tag: #mothmother

The account of a moth mother II

The account of a moth mother