Children of Three

She loved her cards, sent from the children of three; Held in her withered hands of tissue in scarring.
Adults as they had grown to be, but the memory of her, left them as her children, still.
In there before, she was bound in their flesh; The morbidity of a blood tie.
______

She never knew where her mother had gone, where her father stayed to his secluded self.
She adored her dolls, and what he gave to her; each Christmas for gifts to await, stemmed under its white bristles.
Yet that year, there hid none.

The day seemed bright, and gleamed from the snow; the nights dreary and darkened; Deadly.
Any day, her mother would come home again, and she would be there at the window to wait.
He sat often, with his hands consuming his face, and in the length of time, built himself a deformity of severe curvature to the back.
He seemed to wait, but not for her; as she had.

Her father gowned her often with pleasant attire, and the shortness of her hair always kept.
For it to grow beyond ear length, he would snip, again;
His hands shook to disease, and fragments of hair cut to the scalp - balding spots to various sects.
She cared nothing of hair, to her looks and mirrors kept from the house as rule.

He gave to her - friends, a small few at a time to share her dolls with before they disappeared to return home.
Though, they changed each time around - like clothes worn to never be wore again.
Pills to sleep for, with, where she would wake to the stench of mold and decay in her bed, alone.
He said, she was ill; He had to be right through her pain and soreness of the mornings that came.

Christmas grew closer and the tree still bare - father, gone and anxious of why.
She crept to each room, to search and find, nothing... at all.
To his door - the bolt unlocked, and switch the light, to stand in his room and where she
glared to find, the room emptied and the floor, gone.

She stood about a replacement, to which it held as plexi- glass, strong, and thick.
To look through and made the vision distraught - dizzy.
Where had her father gone to, with the tree so bare and left alone;
The darkness in the level under the floor, with movement caught and she became fearful.
The assumption her father crept below her;

She led herself to the basement below, and the cellar, where she was not allowed to go.
Stood at its door waiting for him to come, but it locked from the outside and not the in.
Trapped himself as a possibility, she opened the door of the cellar, to let him free,
and rather, finding the children of three;

They huddled in fear, for each step she took startled them more;
so gruesome she felt, with the lack of comprehension to what she has found.
A room they were kept, walls made of strictly mirror.
To turn, for the first of years and see - herself.

She ran to the centre floor of safety and denial; The utter rejection of her appearance
to scold her so harshly.
In manic, she ripped from her face patches of sewn flesh that were held freshly in its place,
to scream in its disgust more so than the agony. Remorse for the children of three,
she left for them the cellar open to escape at will and in time, they lurked through the house in cautious sight.
To see her friends again, she did and to her heart sunk,
she locked the bolts about the house, for them to roam but not leave;

He wouldn't return, as she knew - for he was gone, and would stay gone.
She lingered the home, as bairn as it stood, and the tree so bland where Christmas
came and gifts devoured the beneath of its stand.

She wrapped for them what molded foods remained left, with the sewn flesh torn from her face
made into ornaments. Her dolls, passed to them, as she thought she had no need anymore;
Her fate was made as much as her mind, and as they fed from the molded foods, she removed
the bolts so to leave, they did;

She vanquished, also, for years; Cops to plague the house and the children of three recovered.
But not gone, she wasn't;
A card received in the mail for the children of three - As adults, they've become - an invite to her own Christmas celebration.

In attempted gratitude, they arrive to the same decrepit dwelling of a house, where they
were once kept and hesitant, decided to stay weary of entrance.
She greeted them excitedly at the door, and in her most devoted love presented them to their
gifts; Which stood where they were once imprisoned.

Reluctant to view the cellar, she switched the lights for them to see;
The not-so-white Christmas tree.
__________

For that he was gone and now bound he would stay,
to be their most cherished - Christmas Display.