I Remember - Otep

Who’s there?

Who’s there?

And I remember

Flashes of laughter

And lunatics

Lost in the asylum

Seductive propaganda

Scrolling across my mind

Like guerilla cinema.

Belts and wooden spoons

Flies in the afterbirth

Like shadows across my brain

And crawling on linoleum kitchens

Streaming death and corporate concienceness into my brain

And cracked porclein sinks stuffed with

Dirty dishes.

The early morning anxiety of gradeschool

Dark stockings to hide the bruises.

Secret friends and festive holidays

And everyone in their sunday best

Pretending to like each other.

For generations and generations of

Sad mistakes.

Stealing away in the dead of night to

Escape the stiff jawed henchmen in the hungry trucks

Of an angry slumlord miles and miles away.

Impatient and understanding

Waking on the side of the road

Hissing radiator hoses cracked like

Burned skin.

Days so hot a nuclear holocaust would’ve felt like siberian blizzard.

And I remember

The first time I felt it alive inside me

Turning the deadweight

Moving within the folds of its winged embrace

Opening and sliding those black feathers

Inches at a time.

Those feet

Pushing and digging into the membrane

Deep enough to cause pregnancy

And I remember it going numb

And listening to it hum

And I feel it move in its mysteries

Exploring me

And I remember this

And I know

I never had a chance.

There’s never any escaping it.