The Lamb

by Lucy Rose

‘All women used to have fur until the hunters decided it wasn’t what they wanted anymore.

‘The things that happen to us change us, Little One,’ she said.

She looked the way I’d always imagined women were supposed to look. At peace. Relaxed. A part of nature, like a stone or a stream.

‘Men love the idea of women. They love the question about a woman. The mystery yet to be solved. Then, when he discovers she has a personality all of her own, neuroses and quirks, just like him, he decides . . .’

‘The devil looks as ordinary as you and me.’

There was a person there, but all I saw was meat. It could have been a butcher’s pig because what made her her had been stripped away with a carving knife and thrown in the bin.

‘Years feel longer when you aren’t loved the way you want to be. Or the way you’re supposed to be.’

Mama had told me she loved me. Eden had told me she loved me. Papa had told me he loved me. But it had all started to fray and lose its meaning, like a wave curling, crashing, and then becoming nothing at all as it disappeared back out to sea.

She twined her fingers with mine, unaware that I was the monster that had eaten her papa’s fingers.

It’s impossible to truly know someone who hides so much of themselves and consumes so much of others.

I was a changeling, like the boys from school and the other children, constantly shifting while our parents wanted us, so badly, to stay frozen.

‘I think our brains will love in whatever capacity they can.’

I wondered if this was what being a real human was: accepting you were pieces of other people too. The people you loved and the people you hurt.

‘You were supposed to be a promise of happiness, but you’ve eaten me alive.

Motherhood in a nutshell?

‘Being a mama is a promise to try your best,’ I whispered into her ear. ‘But you didn’t try.’