The Handless Maiden In Verse - Part 9
Monthly poems serializing a classic tale in verse...
Dear friends,
Thank you so much for stepping into this little corner of the poetry world. :)
Welcome to the ninth installment of The Handless Maiden in Verse! If you missed Parts 1-8, not to worry! They’re linked here (preceding parts are embedded in Part 8 below):
I hope you enjoy. :)
Take good care & speak soon. 🌱
Gratefully,
Mik
The Handless Maiden - Part 9
There was a ferocity in the knocking that indicated a stranger who somehow knew them. The Miller cracked the back door against its unused, rusted chain to greet a young woman, cloaked in black hair like a sleeping raven's wings, eyes frozen ponds, awaiting spring. She wore a cape of faded gold, hood down under an undying rain, carrying no light but a yellow apple core. She knew, he knew, this was what they shared: blood-skinned apples would have barred her entry to such a gaping wound: the home of parents baking their shame into fruit pies. The tree was, somehow, still alive. Without an exchange of words, the Miller led her in, watching as every step splashed— painted the floors with water. An offering, he knew, by way of having seen this sort of cleansing before. Retha did not sit down. She did not sit by the warm fire. She stood by the chill of the creaking window, waiting for the abysmal silence to be broken by those who’d brewed it. “You know her, don’t you?” the Miller muttered. “She loves her,” Eva’s mother whispered, nearly sneering to conceal embarrassment as she sliced and chopped the rotten spots from the apples. Retha lifted her chin and pressed her shoulder blades back like wings. “I do, and I know she doesn’t even know your names. A family custom, I suspect, since you don’t know each others’ either, I guess.” Retha looked hard into the Millers’ face, well-nourished in food, but not much else these long years. Eva’s parents looked to the fire. “Where is she?” The Miller demanded. “I don’t know.” “Then why do you come?” Eva’s mother demanded. “For what you already know.” They both looked behind Retha, into the twisting rains. “That we must forget her.” “No, you must remember.” “We have to go—we have to find her, but how?” The Miller croaked. “Where she is, as she is, not as you are. As you could be.” Hands to chest: “Retha.” Hands to heart: “Adam.” Hands to Adam’s: “Ella.” And the door soon locked behind them. *** When Lennon returned to the castle, one cold dawn, Ada led him first to the burial grounds, where Eva and their child were to be buried per his cruel request. Lennon collapsed, screamed with raw horror until he couldn’t speak. Ada knelt, calmly, beside him. Having suspected, she shared the truth as she’d gleaned it. Decades offered Ada a truth she did not share of the deep forest behind the castle: It was alive with cleverness, always changing, growing and sifting and teaching as it learned, thus appearing differently to each traveller. There was never a repeated path, through to those who lived in accordance with its wisdom: the wood people. Lennon rushed to the entrance of the forest. Ada loved him so, and did not stop or prepare him. *** Sword in hand, Lennon basted in grief that seeped through each pore— out, and back in, and out, and back in, clinging and crusting across his skin— the only layer of himself that he couldn’t shave away. Determination braided and wound blame tendrils, reaching for Eva’s parents, those common roots of men like Slyth, he believed them to be. Lennon's hair tattered into ripped ropes, his fingernails sharpened as his hands blistered and bruised, worn thin rather than strong from gripping the hilt, from wielding harshly across brush and bush and branch and animal body. Across seven days, weeks, months, and years, he believed this to be love— the longing that slayed and flayed food, just about to shoot an arrow into the hearth of his next meal. He stopped. He tumbled down, down again into the soil. And finally, he gave himself to the weeping, unaware that his muscles were still taught, bow drawn up, until he felt a hand push his carved bone arrow into the soil, out of the air. Two hands now, tenderly on his shaking shoulders. He looked up. Retha knelt before him, and knew to answer his unspoken question: “I heard your tears.” She smiled—Lennon’s eyes weren’t swollen the way most try to hold onto the safety of pain as he looked behind her, gently, to two people, bathed in softness he never thought he’d meet in them. In the background were two trails of smoke streaking the well-inked, twilight distance. *** When the door beneath the smoke trail they’d chosen to follow opened, a large man with a red, curdled beard ushered them to thick wooden chairs by sturdy cauldrons—one of stew and one for frothed ale. With expertise in not spilling, he dipped in and filled warm bowls from the mantle, cold mugs from the windowsill. “And what, besides food, might you be hungry for?” Ache-deep, loving laughter bellowed from an adjacent room, layered with what could only be toughened hands pressing music through wood and brass keys. “I realize this is unlikely, as it’s been nearly seven years, but has a young woman and child ever passed through here?” Retha asked as kindly as she could manage in weariness. “You’ve been searching for seven years…together?” “No, alone, and we’ve just found each other. And then here, yes, together.” The bearded man grinned with each of his teeth. He nodded, eyes warm amber. “Aye, indeed!” To Be Continued...
Before You Go…
Some poems I’ve loved lately:
Is This My Last Ferry Trip by Martha Silano
I Go Among Trees by Wendell Berry
Photographs at the beach by Anagha Smrithi
Haunt Me by José Enrique Medina
Touch by Matthew Thorburn
won’t you celebrate with me by Lucille Clifton
I Want to Go Back by Gregory Orr
Night Thoughts by Louise Glück
The Abandoned Valley by Jack Gilbert
About a Lady by Brandon L. Williams
Join our Conscious Writers Collective Chat!
✩ My album is also here & the lyric booklet is available for order in Canada or the USA! ✩
