I've just opened another letter and I find there is more!


Mom,

I know you and Father did not want me to be wood. Maybe that is why you forced men of metal on me later, because if I wasn't metal, maybe our babies would be. You are crystal, but metal grinds and scratches crystal; you must have known how many times I was scratched and scarred. How many times has he hurt you, mother, willing or not? With the first metal boy, I told myself it wasn't him, I didn't put together the scratches and his hard edges. But his sharp bones tore the skin off my breast, and soon I could see notches and scoring in the wood underneath. I was young and I was in love and so I bore the pain, until a large mass had grown there and every caress was agony; you know I left him then. I would not let the other men of metal so close to me, but they, too, cut at my skin and always left me bleeding; the scar in my chest did not heal.

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