Doctor, my mother was a wooden woman. I came up to her knees. I wasn’t scared when her torso grew like a gargoyle. Not when I scratched my name in her stomach. The pieces of bark looked like black mouths. I poked them with sticks to see what they’d say. But I didn’t run, Doctor. Not even once. Each winter we broke her and burned what was good. The amputations, in spring, turned ungodly green.