I’m La Llorona And I’d Like To Arrange A Time To Return Your Annoying ‘Gifted Kid’

Buenos dias. It is I, the weeping woman who drowned my babies in a fit of mad, jealous rage untold years ago, and now roam the waterfront as a ghost. There’s no easy way to say this – literally, it took all my concentration just to get this message to you through the multiple dimensions that separate the dead from the living over the sound of your child naming all the state capitals in the US – but, I deeply regret seizing your ‘gifted kid’ into my eternal realm, and would like to arrange to return her to you as soon as possible. 

I’m not certain how time and space work for you relative to the hellish limbo I occupy, but I’m flexible, and desperate. I just can’t bear one more endless cry-session about how misunderstood and anxious your pretentious glue-sniffer feels because you, her mother, have bragged about her flute prowess to friends one too many times. Name the time and place, and I’ll materialise with her, assuming she isn’t in the middle of some awful, thrashing ‘modern dance.’ 

Look, this is very unusual and awkward for me, as I’m sure it must be for you. In my countless years roaming the woods to steal reckless children, this is only the second time I’ve had to return one. The other was some time ago, and he was French, somehow, in the middle of nowhere, West Texas. He had way too many opinions about wine for a five-year-old. Your kid is worse. 

For starters, she was doing some kind of long-exposure night photography in the woods when I found her. Not very bright to be alone in a fog-dense forest trying to photograph moths or whatever all by herself. If she’s so gifted, how come she didn’t think about that? And why such dismal composition in her photos? 

I know it probably seems out of place for me to be offering parenting advice, as I drowned my own children before taking my life and am cursed to steal other people’s children for all eternity, but I think you’ve got ample room for improvement. Granted I’m from a bygone era, but did bullying go out of style? Please consider bringing it back, as I’m sure this would humble your little dweeb, who hasn’t stopped correcting my grammar since I dragged her kicking and screaming to the nether regions in the middle of the night. I never held back from being stern with my own children, and they were perfectly well-behaved and popular, until I snapped. But you know, that’s on me.

Please respond as soon as you get this. She’s reciting what she calls “poetry.” I wasn’t a perfect mother, but nobody deserves to be subjected to endless strings of spontaneous haiku about moths.

This post appears courtesy of our January 2021 publishing partnership with The Hard Times. Every month, Widget partners with an organisation to feature one post/week from their contributors, members, or so on. View the other posts from our partner’s contributors here.

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