The ancient woman sat under her roof

Thatched with straw and soil and youth

Her fingers curled 'round a dying candle

Lighting her uncomely home as she rambled

"Why is my daughter so late in coming?"

"At this hour she aught to be running!"

She sat in an old oak chair pushing and rocking

Waiting for her daughter's hand to come knocking

The middle of her gaunt face stood enlightened

By the mangled candle where her fingers tightened

The tea brewed on the red fire beside her

As the hot steam began to choir and stir

The woman turned her face, exposing a scar

Rigid and deep and black as tar

Its depression remained drearily dark

Where the candle's light lost its mark

Its hard form was grotesquely violent

Speaking horror, intensely silent

The woman rustled and finally erected

Rising to walk with good footing selected

Slowly she shuffled over to the fire

While the flames sent her shadow higher and higher

She sat the candle down on the mantle above

And handled her tea with unrivaled love

She poured it gently into an old cracked cup

The steam escaping and fuming up

Then a knock barked from the crooked door

Its vibration traveled through the wood floor

She laid down the kettle and picked up the candle

Shuffling to the door as she again began to ramble

"Finally you come you ungrateful wench."

"I thought I could smell your ungainly stench."

Her old hand pried open the door

Exposing the wind and its magnificent roar

A beautiful, trembling woman stood outside

With an old looking hatchet hanging by her side

"Have you yet to find some desperate man to wed?"

The old wretched woman sharply said

And with that the woman's hand came to rise

And drive the hatchet between her mother's eyes

Blood spewed two rivers around her crinkled nose

And as she fell to the floor her cold eyes froze

The daughter left the door open to light of day

To show all the world the demon she slay