Aunt Lydia Out

To be more than a monster molded by the patriarch

Beyond the Handmaid’s Tale ?

Was Becka’s demise

A dark nod to the girl

Fished out from the water tank of

Cecil’s dark tower?

The water stank

And everyone drank

A piece of her

Flavor in their mouths

Metallic

They fleshed her out and played elevator games

Conspiring with ghosts

All because she tied her fate to a rock

And drowned

Her body

A bloated eucharist

To be sacrificed to tall tales

I imagine her skipping

The sidewalks of skidrow

Past the newspaper blankets  mixed in with

The stench of piss and

Dirty little secrets

Crossing borders and

Borderlines

In a search party

For herself and

People looking

She must have been

Manic

In her own Femme

Fatale

Nizm

Manic from the fix to fix those nights with no sleeping.

Manic off a cocktail of pills meant to keep her

Demons at bay

Instead of opening the lid.

She must not have read the fine print.