The Crane Wife
I cannot lie to you. (I cannot lie.) Instead, I pull white feathers from this foreign body and shut my mouth. Each extraction, a sharp prick of pain, a loss softer than your kiss. For you, I do this. The cloth I make is the silk mist of our now lonely mornings, the remembered happiness of old pine trees after a summer rain. It is made from the ghostly touch of your hands, our forgotten laughter. (Over our knives and feathers, these needles and my dreams of freedom, I have cried.) And when you finally see what I do - when your eyes take in my blood soaked dress, my pain soaked eyes, and you say... nothing... that will be the end. (I will not lie.)
October 20th, 2014