iron & garlic & salt & blood form ring after ring after ring after ring around your house, & each individual layer appears to be so thin on its own but as years pass they start to accumulate, an inch at first and then six and then a foot and then three feet & now you need a small stool to step over your protective barrier & now a full set of stairs has become a necessity & the neighbors complain about the smell of rotting garlic and the crimson residue that washes into their gardens when it rains & you laugh at them when their children are stolen by faeries or turned into vampires & you add new layers of iron & garlic & salt & blood & the wall is five feet tall now and your own daughter can’t climb over it without the stairs’ help & one day you catch her trying to cross the wall when you aren’t there to protect her from what lies beyond and so you remove the steps because beyond the wall, there are faeries & vampires, but inside the wall, she’s safe.
autumn leaves & snowflakes & flowers & sunshine & year after year after year after year your girl fights with you every time you leave the house because she wants to go too & you ask her where she’d go, because this woodland town is abandoned now thanks to the faeries & the vampires that only you guarded against & she screams at you that she just wants out, that she’d rather risk her life & your love for her just to see something besides that wall of iron & garlic & salt & blood & you just tell her to make a rope from her braided hair because your joints are straining & you are growing old & you need an extra aide as you descend that towering, towering wall that guarantees your daughter’s safety.
screams & nightmares & longing & hate & you are crying tear after tear after tear after tear because one day you climb her braided hair and find no her at its apex, only an empty platform & an empty house & you light a lantern and leave your self-crafted sanctuary, leave the way your daughter left: alone; & iron & garlic & salt & blood don’t protect her anymore & you’re losing hope & then you see her running toward you through the trees & she’s laughing & radiant & her front teeth have lengthened and curled out over her lip & when you wrap your arms around her she wraps her jaw around your neck.
fangs & claws & dusk & hunger & she sucks down sip after sip after sip after sip until your skin is crackling and dry & your eyes have burst & she has lapped up the remnants of those bloated vessels & she is radiant with sustenance & you sag in her arms and perish there doing what you’ve always done: keeping your girl alive just a little longer.
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Ⓒ Nico Martinez Nocito