Thirty Summers #131 Claine Keily

And so my demons are named. I find their forms strange, as I did not create them, nor choose to adopt them even. They came parcelled up, gifts from my family, my gender, my class, my culture.

There is the demon named Fear. She haunts me with a strange infrequency, born of mother, of father. This monster grew and festered as she suckled on my breasts. There is the demon called Overwork, who leads me to the precipice of exhaustion, until I fall at night from unlit attics and tear the limbs from my body, or drive my car off the side of my broken driveway. But mostly there is the demon of  Dread, of the dread not living enough, of the fear of not being able to breathe in enough of the air of the forests, brush enough against the fur and feathers of my creatures, to have not spent enough time nestled by candle light dining and singing with friends. My father gave me this demon, and I have come to rename her, so as she is now called The Angel of an Awareness of Death.