Two Eyes Cenote Leaf-nosed

“They were for me,” jaws, lips moving around the whimper, repressed tears stinging the backs of her eyes. “I wanted to belong to someone.” The child, whose bud she had carried within the core of herself, and with whom she fell into a perennial love.

Unguarded, a paw touches her belly. There is no rejuvenation of deads buds, or dead nerves. She lays, hand upon her valley of flat desiccation, gaze dully fettered to a single budding goldenrod that would never be her’s.

The coyote is adamant; she is unwound from a life that would only end in senseless death. The sting, the wound, the shame, the guilt, she must have known it, arranging the stems in her palm– the white noise of her womb.

Eset’s own, silenced.

“What sacrifice?” No inflection in the voice, instead her eyes ask Qiao only for a numbness to this pain. But what more had she to give?