my Son saved my life,

but I’m not sure it was worth saving.

I endured what others say is Unimaginable…
what would kill men
stronger and faster and smarter…
I survived alone

He came, that Light within me, and I escaped… Saving his life was saving my own

I can hardly dare
believe it myself,
it seems dreams and lives ago

many of those same people, who gasp and make hollow sympathy noises
would wonder aloud
if I had imagined it

did they hear what came after.

They would see my Charmer and grant me snakehood
a savage, undeserving
wild thing he had tamed,
ungrateful for my new life

my Rescuer they call him, I called him in delirium once, covering my wounds with sparkling pretty lies
making it bearable

they did not see my home in shreds, and my scales askew
his true form covered in likeness
a glamour
for the hungry void beneath the shiny, teflon exterior

Rhagerhis moilensis am I,
always viewed with wary
suspicion
too feral, too female
to be seen as aware
to be worthy of Naming reality true

naming Charming for what he is
in parables

feeling out signs
of friends or foes or worse, spectators

to my undoing has left me with no faith
or hope of a loving future