Red wind spirits. They carry people off. Mostly mothers, no, not mostly mothers, than is an allegorical kink, an innate twist, it feels like mostly-mothers, and so legend instantly concretizes itself in that feeling-force. The red wind spirits are also called goblins. I call them goblins when telling the story to the babies, my two sisters (their swimming moonseed eyes see me as caretaker, I am caretaker now, mother of story and home) … From nightmare and menace in real-time, dark fables are born. Flavored in furnace and runes. The burn remains on my tongue every time I tell the story, my tongue grows more ashen with each passing day (it has been seven weeks since we last saw our mother, seven weeks which we have turned into a blank slate of numberless agony, seven now part of void). I tell the babies about the goblins who steal people. They know the goblins by heart, young hearts weren’t meant to be branded with goblins, I sometimes think, sometimes reprimand myself for telling the babies about goblins. I am at a loss, word-and-otherwise. I am not a natural storyteller. This role was thrust upon me by conditional necessity. The babies know about goblins, about red wind spirits. Their moonseed eyes now flicker with the haunt of this profane knowledge, the dying of stars as perceived through aquarium glass, embers diffused and bewitched. The babies do not know about men in numbered suits, operating as brutal calendars and pale assassins, men who have grown eyeless through black wraparound visors, men with large hands, large enough to cover houses and neighborhoods. The babies do not know of men. They only know of goblins. They have one foot in fable, the other hopping off somewhere. I could, if I choose to, present my mother as evidence, as a series of curated photographs hinting at a life—the kitchens tattooed onto her elbows and wrists, walking the dog at the crack of dawn in her pajamas and slippers, the way her mouth forms a sickle when she is curious or doesn’t understand what you’re asking her … I could present this life, a life, my mother, our mother.

(every night

when i go to sleep

i feel

an army of fire ants

crawling on my skin

raising an empire

taking over

a body i cannot escape)

One of the babies cracked open her egg of fear, equal parts origin and shadow, by asking—Where is mama? The other baby, her sister, threaded the loop—When is mama coming home? That was seven weeks ago. They don’t ask anymore. I don’t know what they dream. I do know that they mutely pray every night to keep the goblins from abducting any more members of our family, of any family. And me? I give my tired mind silent permission to shrink down the colossal hands into something common, something manageable. I practice this useless alchemy, and sometimes I pray, same as the babies.

P.S. Last night me and the babies conducted a séance, using a hollowed-out gourd and mother’s heirloom silverware, just to see if contact was possible. We heard nothing, but one of the babies, wise beyond her years, suggested we give it more time.