Advice for my daughter

Trigger Warning: Mild gore.

Dear darling, my child—

When you shed your first moon’s blood and taste the first sweet caress of love’s cavity, be wary, lest you find yourself bound to monstrous horrors made from man, those hungry sucks from lips of sugar can rot the skin and infect the blood. I shall show you, my child, the face of the devil and the markings by which you may be graced to live.

By now, I am far from the two-eyed demon of which you hear me speak. His flames are extinguished, at least within me, so listen here, now. This is how to remember the man pitted with tar and sick under moonlight and stars.

His description in full: greased brown curls that twist together into pointed tentacles, alive in his daughters and lesser known sons. Skeletal frame and bubbled skin with puss exuded from nostrils and nails.

Once a golden boy, age took his sacred breath, filled him with gall and crocodile milk, changed form to a spindle doused in leaking zits to make the skin red and bruised.

He rested with his mousetrap fingers wrapped tight across my aching throat. I’d never been held so close—bliss in the eye of an oncoming storm that would grow to smother.

Shattered were my broken bones full of pink marrow, he would suck upon my bleeding holes. The worst he could do was hurt me; the worst I could do, was run away.

So child, I beg you, keep your eyes and ears wide. When you see curls of brown and seared scaled back, a skeleton shrouded in cottons of red,

run. Fast and far. Don’t let his devil horns and widow’s peak

drift in your gaze, bind you to his side–don’t be a blood bag for the devil’s dinner time.