Nine Little Girls

In the darkest cradle
in the velvet womb,
lay nine little girls
in an anodyne tomb.

Their eyes rolled backward
in their sweet little heads
and grey sarcophagi
in the place of their beds.

All mouths saying nothing,
all hearts cold and thick,
no pain felt, no suffering,
no cuts to the quick.

But not so while living;
for these nine lasses fair,
so dark was their childhood
and deep their despair.

So vile, so depraved
was their own daddy-dear
and mommy's wild wrath
was a true thing to fear.

In the still of the night,
to their beds daddy crept
and raped them, each one,
as they silently wept.

In the light of the sun
they would hide swollen eyes
and tend to their duties
in practiced disguise.

Their mommy, like Snow White's
stepmother, would call;
"I will always be fairer than you,
one and all!"

And as the sun fell,
and daylight succumbed,
each girl prayed for end to
what she knew was to come.

So thus were the lives
of these little girls nine,
until merciful deliverance
upon them did shine.

Their mommy resented
the children she bore
and wanted, intensely,
to be burdened no more.

And so in the night,
when the door opened wide,
not daddy, but mommy
was who the girls eyed.

She stepped like a cat
through the black and still room
with a pillow in hand;
a foretelling of doom.

Though she was silent,
the girls were aware;
for to sleep deep and sound
would not one of them dare.

And when first the pillow
masked one pretty face;
no sign of a struggle,
not one quickened trace.

As each new the present
would soon slip to past,
all smiled at the breath
each knew would be her last.