Consumed

My daughter was nine when I munched off the dark purple patches that dappled her limbs after hearing her whimpers at night, sweat trickling on her temples. She murmured her thanks, and I held her in my arms as we slept.

 

It hadn’t been a month when they returned, her skin mottled with crimson streaks. I tried to chew off the splotches winding her body. She could barely move as she complained of the searing pain behind her ribs when I asked her to stand. I rushed her to the ER, my daughter curled up in the backseat as I darted through busy streets at breakneck speed.

 

After weeks of testing and thrashing, the doctors told me the dreaded words. A cacophony of glaring sounds blasted in my ears. For a few seconds, I couldn’t hear anything. I turned to my daughter’s pallid face, my racing breaths matching the monitor by the bed recording upticks in her heart rate.

 

“Mommy will make it go away, love.” The sentence stumbled to run off my mouth as I spouted more assuring phrases that sounded flat in my ears. The doctors slowly shook their heads and wedged the MRI scan results into my trembling hands before they left, the flimsy black and white film showing a mass encroaching on her bones. 

 

She gripped my hand and forced a smile. “Show mommy where it hurts,” I said, and my daughter’s palms landed on her arms. So, I gnawed on her arms where blotches of purple bloomed underneath her skin. For months, I asked, and asked until the bed was pooled with blood and tangles of flesh, and my daughter returned into me, where nothing can hurt her ever again.

​

​