Claimant
She desperately wanted to marry a kind human.
Each evening she grew a delicate new hymen.
Her favorite elixir changed absolutely nothing
but the color of the antidote.
At dawn, façades shed their protective mirrors.
Glittering powder dusted the broadening meres.
No one was hungry enough to eat anything
prepared by anomalies.
When summoned, she put on a satin underwire.
The intricacies of her hair concealed the whirr.
She was decorated for rancor and something
else under an antonym.
Days accumulated in drifts of dark wreaths.
No one acknowledged the shuddering wraiths.
The trees offered to translate almost everything
into the tongues of her ancestors.
She shed her fading scales in order to resume
an occupation she did not list on her résumé.
Her fatalistic overseer manifested as a thing
neither angel nor animal.