Tuesday Poem

[handful_ofdust]

THE WHITE QUEEN SPEAKS

This is a tale
told 'round campfires at the
battle's edge, a tale of mirrors,
of mothers. And as I lived it through,
let it be known—I am
far more than any empty crown
fulfilled, any name without face,
or face without a name.
And so
my knights will swear their swords
not to my beauty, since beauty fades,
but to the throne I sit in,
grown from my legend's shadow.

To my college of heralds, meanwhile, I declare
that a blood-red apple,
quartered, on snowy ground—
rumour of predestined weakness, proof
of miracles—shall henceforth be
my only standard.

For she was right in some ways,
my stepmother: Men see
only what they want, and try—
worse yet—to make us see it, too.
Which is why I give thanks
I was allowed to live eighteen years
with no mirror, seeing my own
reflection only in her eyes.

Now freed, therefore, I swear to be
my own sort of queen,
self-married. Never to dress the part
for some man who will like me better
off dead, an eternal child—this
crackless ikon doll coloured red-white-black,
forever trapped on display
for all the world to venerate
in some glass coffin.

My stepmother ate souls
like air, sucked them down and shone
only to lose that light again, faster each time
as her flesh grew thin, with no real hope
of fixture 'til the mirror she worshipped
closed 'round her like a tomb.
For thus age comes to all, however tardily,
rendering flesh
no fit stone to build on.

So my own mother knew
when first she made the prayer that runs
through me like blood.
Which is why
I plan to bleed and swell, in season;
put on each child like armour,
'til I put it off, in turn. And vow too that,
be they boy or girl, they will bear
my name, alone.

As the land feeds me, I will
feed it. Knowing myself born in sacrifice,
I will ask no one else to pay
my prices for me. And so
while she waxed and waned, I grow.

Yet she was wise too, that lovely witch
in her dream-haunted room,
and all she knew I am only
beginning to know the half of.
Which is why I let her enemies think
I killed her terribly, in judgement, vindicated,
instead of half-sorrow. Those red-hot shoes
run out before me, blazing a path,
making any who hear the tale think twice
about swooping down to scoop
ashes from the dead queen's hearth.

For what is burnt may bloom again, after all,
if only allowed enough time to.

She told her tale her way, but
it is over. And since this is
my tale now—named for me—I find
I too can tell it, any way I wish.