Betrayal is a fruitless seed
that cannot grow and may not leave.
But I don't mind her company.
She's not her mother, nor is she
a badge of how her mother won
and scraped the insight off my tongue,
and chipped my teeth, and cut my lip.
I see myself, a lurching lich
of charcoal black and vulgar ridges,
stretched and bent.
How beautiful, betrayal shows
upon my face.
And in her mother's place, I hold
Betrayal's hand until she goes.
