Welcome mat

Her serrated scissor smile bares auriferous caps and barely concealed rubies on artificially plump lips, as she pours pyrite pleasantries over late night, lamplit sidewalks and creeping, drive-by lechery

She’s made threats of paper dolls to ensnare desperate secret keepers into paying for secrets and keeping nothing else, and spit out flurries of giant snowflakes for those who can only afford to supplement her habits

Morpho perch above her unscrupulous, squinting eyes, as she chain smokes with clinquant claws buried beneath the peeling paint of baroque gaud; buried within the backhands and promised lands of they who force feed her

Dressing half her age, and getting half the pay, from men that project more hate than she can reflect; she’s stuck in her own honey trap, stirring in the bitterness through the cyclic repetition of septic recompense

Sometimes when the night is still, she’ll lie in bed listening to her chest echo the steady, stalwart footfalls of approaching Death, and she wonders when he’ll grace the welcome mat she’s placed before her door

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