Parasite Mine

Lisa Lahey

I was born a cannibal sharing a womb

with my twin but she didn’t remain for long.

I guarded the placenta greedily sucking the life from

it with tiny, jagged teeth protecting what

had always been mine.

I grew while she shrank to the size of a pea,

a tapeworm burrowing inside of me

with its tiny, jagged teeth

trying to win this bloody war that was life,

empty and fathomless though it was.

She carried like a light burden floating inside me,

the yolk of an egg that would never hatch.

Mother, silver-eyed and slender, with succulent skin

and flowing, fine hair, already abhorred me.

She carried me loosely, balanced me within the cove

of her womb, a sea-saw that teetered

 on the edge of insanity,

hoping I would slip and fall into nothingness.

Maliciously I tore her open

a spiral-shaped bullet that seared

through her womb with rage.

I yearned to become a two-headed golden-beaked eagle,

carrying my hidden sister within me,

burdened with layers of water-tight wings

that spread as wide as a valley

dipping from the sky and ripping into my prey,

gripping the animal’s innards,

a soft apocalypse for the errant hare

as it had been for my wretched mother.

We cannot run from death or live forever,

there is no shame in savagery; it is a glorious thing.

My belly bulged with the sister I’d devoured

as all fetuses and the eaten will do

hide, hide, hide, I whispered to her

the world is glacial and there is no love here for you.

They scooped her out of me,

leaving a barren crevice

closing me with a scar as thick

and undulating as an earthworm.

They left my abdomen empty and scraped clean,

a pumpkin with its pulp and seeds removed,

an empty shell left to rot without a barrier from the shit,

the vulgarities, and the snakes beneath my feet.

My mother feared me even more and rightly so

I leered at her, flashing those tiny, jagged teeth

regrown in perfect points like snow-capped mountain peaks,

and wondered how her throat would taste.

My twin met my sea glass eyes with hers

she was wrapped in black hair that tumbled to her feet,

we hid a sinister smile.

We’d feast together, the double-headed golden-beaked eagle

our pointed, mountain-capped teeth ripping through Mother’s flesh

burdened as we were with layers of water-tight wings

that spread as wide as a valley.

I wanted our wretched mother to writhe in mouth-watering anguish

throughout the feeding

we’d save her delicate lightly veined flesh for last,

it was her choice to force us into this monstrous world

until, with talons and wings, we burrowed our way out of her

into luscious madness.

Lisa Lahey's short stories and poetry have been published in 34th Parallel Magazine, Spaceports and Spidersilk, Five on the Fifth, Blood and Bourbon Magazine, Bindweed Anthology, Spadina Literary Review, Vita Poetica, Ariel Chart Review, Altered Reality, Suddenly, And Without Warning, Why Vandalism, Truth, Beauty and Imagination, and Creepy Podcast. She will soon be published in Epater Magazine, The Pink Hydra, Roi Fointenant, Small City World, VerbalArt Journal, Adelaide Review, Siren Call Publications, Engstand Magazine, West Avenue Publishing,  Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Propagate Fruits from the Garden.