I met a glorious woman-child one day,
Eerily exquisite in her efforts to vanish herself
A grotesque vision in flea-hole remnants
A dimmed beauty torn limb to mind...

She showed me drawings of locked doors and scratched nightmares -
A birth rite of the old Eastern empire, told in language I could comprehend.

I watched her bottomless eyes reflect Delirium:
That I might beg my most maternal nature to rebirth her ruined self,
Extracting years of horror and the decay of her childhood,
in one understanding glance.

- Written 1999