David Ehmcke

Something unseen stirs in the actual grass.

Is it a wolf again, or does the threat bear

the weight of the real? Mist rolling over rolling hills

sets the scene for a monster the imagination

conjures in the gaps where vision fails.

“Why did you lie?” the man asked his husband,

the break in his voice betraying the pang

of revelation that comes once the princess pulls

the mask from her dancer, revealing all night

she’d passionately held the villain’s hand.

Every answer sprouted questions where clarity

was meant. It was a hydra of a thought. Predicting

the possible twists in the tale could make a listener

sick: the betrayed hero, the dead sidekick, the details

of a pirate ship lost in a too-stormy plot…

Why tell it? A matter of boredom, power,

or protection, no one—not even the author herself—

could precisely say. It was a way to fuse my life

in the world with the life of the mind. At her old

metal desk, she considers this fact, then commits to it.

Across the years, a mother cries, God,

I just need my son to fall asleep! Scheherazade winks.

Morning comes, its scant crows

streaky yet sharp, chicken-scratch characters

drawn on the sky’s prodding white.

The man studies his husband’s face for answers.

Was he lonely, angry, or never in love? The suspense

was unbearable and the bedroom began to reek of red fish.

“Don’t make me ask it again…” Tree branches

at the whims of the wind beat at the window, leaning in.

In the last days of her life, of her life the author wrote:

It was a crisis of invention, a touching in the dark. In the dark,

turning from corner to corner again, I feel

at the edges of what she felt for, ask, “What is it?”

The End.