Don't Sit Under the Lilac Tree

Sometimes I get sad because I don’t know any other monsters, and then I cry, steady tears of condensed milk. I sleep with one foot out of the blankets at night but nothing ever bites. I have walked a thousand miles on my hands and slept in graves both empty and full, but every time I thought I met a monster it was the shadow of a lilac tree. If I met another monster we could be penpals, and I could send it illuminated manuscripts about the state of my bowels and little sachets of silverfish. I wish more things came in sachets.

Snout and his brother are playing some kind of computer game in the living room and so I am trapped in here, listening to The Andrews Sisters and eating my finger-skin. I should be tending to my book, the slime-cauled goblin-child I birthed in the bathroom, but I think I have postnatal depression. It doesn’t work if you drink the gin after the fact.