All life is built upon the bones of ghosts; Mother, Gaia, Holle, Mary, Matriarch, Executioner: feed me with your flesh or bury me in it.

My body is not my own. I have been a host for twenty years. I have been a captive-mother, feeding her parasitic children with the stale bread of my own flesh. They burrow in my belly, sleep in my womb, they suckle on my heart. They have made a colony of my body and they survive more efficiently than I ever have on my own. Shall I succumb? Shall I allow these children to feed on my carcass? Have they not earned the right? Have they not succeeded over my own feeble will to live? Shall I curl up like a burial mound on the floor and let them take me? Surrender my body to the rightful victors? They have eaten my flesh for twenty years. What is left? What is left?