By:Monnette Mella
If anyone would fain catch a glimpse—
Of my childhood’s hours (though dipped with chagrin),
And witness the propensity to conniving vices that subdued me into ascetism—
They might not vex but pity me instead!
I was just knee-high when I met the fiend;
He materialized out of thin air in the corner of my room.
His habiliment I could not discern, but his fangs were sharp
and his eyes—oh, his crimson eyes were leering at my every move!
But above all, his slender hands were what I feared the most.
His constant asperity barred me
from relishing the scrumptious meal.
If I dipped my finger on a cake,
He came barreling towards me, snatching any morsel—
With those slender hands that I feared the most.
In prostration, I was trounced by his lambasting;
To elude his touch, I devoted myself.
To laxatives and diuretics,
And gagged my throat to spew out viscous chunks—
until my teeth eroded.
On other days, fasting and retching were not enough;
To make those filthy hands out of my sight,
And so he gave me a rope to jump on—
Or else he would tie it around my neck—
I capitulated once more!
The consistent frisking sapped my energy
until my legs became feeble and my gait wobbly.
My health deteriorated in leaps and bounds.
And still, in a low jarring voice, he spoke of malediction;
“Hideous! What a hideous person you are!”
With my ribs sticking out of my chest,
And my shoulder blades boring through
the back of my shirt;
Even yet I felt my paunch bulging—
All I saw was a corpulent woman in the mirror.
In seething resentment, I jumped on the demon;
The pall of pungent smoke around him subsided.
I was astounded to see—with a hint of
recognition in my eyes;
my mother, and my father, and my brother, and all my kinship—
And yet, not a single trace of contrition on their visages!
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