The Handless Maiden In Verse - Part 6

Monthly poems serializing a classic tale in verse...

Jul 08, 2025

Dear friends,

Thank you so much for stepping into this little corner of the poetry world. :)

Welcome to the sixth installment of The Handless Maiden in Verse! If you missed Parts 1-5, not to worry! They’re linked here:

Re-sharing my blurb from the past few months, too:

I also know a lot is going on right now & I know you feel its residue, too. So I wanted to share some newsletters that help me stay informed (but grounded) amid the slush of social media: The On Canada Project (for other fantastic Substacks, you can see which ones I read & recommend here), The 1440, Reimagined, Collective Rest, Al Jazeera, Press Progress, The Breach, and SAPIENS.

I hope you enjoy this month’s materials. :)

Take gentle, tender care & speak soon.

Gratefully,

1) Ornate copper handles of a wooden door, turning green from oxidization. One handle is slightly downturned, as if being opened from the other side. 2) Two yellow tulips, mostly closed, poking up through dry dirt. 3) A small pond where a swan swims & a black + grey bird flies overhead through a blue sky. 4) Inside a small restaurant, some small tables & chairs are next to a window that looks out across a small town of hold houses & cobblestone streets. It's night time & there’s a tree of fairy lights next to the tables. — Photos taken & shared by the wonderful Lida Pavlova (@lidapavlova_magic on Instagram).

The Handless Maiden - Part 6*

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So, I hear, it’s a good time to remember 
how people fall in love—though quiet
in walk, Eva wasn’t in wake. 

Violence had so sanded her edges
that she rounded, too soft for words. 

As someone who so often leaned
on speech to lead the kingdom, 

the king didn’t realize the void, now filled
with relationship that doesn’t privilege words
as the only language. He followed her, 

shadowed her, by which he was, at first,
only visible to her when the sun shone.

***

Nearly a year later, she saw him
through the stable window, beneath a sky 
like pregnant shadows as he gathered apples. 
Lightning struck the forest behind him 
as he filled a bulging shoulder bag.

Eva was feeding and brushing the horses,
balancing apples she’d gathered—
during the storm’s infancy—in the crook of her arm.
She’d pinned the brush between an X of forearms.

The king’s favourite pie was apple, 
and Eva turned away, assuming many things, 
and began to hum quietly, so naturally, 
he startled her when he appeared, closer now.

“Don’t stop,” he said through the glassless window, 
palms resting protectively on the body 
of the bag he carried. 

Eva smiled kindly, her gaze combing
the basket of apples by her bare feet.

“I figured, but truth be told, there’s only one
apple in my bag.” The king laughed
like a young child caught in the act.

Eva tilted her head and slightly narrowed her eyes,
reading, searching, unflinching, walking across
the young creases in his face—the ones 
that form like streams of water, finally strong 
enough to flow through soil and around rock.

He let her eyes wander, watching every minute
movement. After the silence settled 
under the horse's hooves, he spoke again, 
familiar with the rhythms of her non-verbal responses. 

“And now? What do you think of why I’m here?”

Eva glanced behind him at the storm—cracking, booming,
crying. Her face hardened ever so slightly. 

“No, not that storm.”

He smiled, first, but it faded 
into the face a heart hijacks 
when it wishes to speak. 

“Could I come in? Please?” He said,
so gently the plea was undetectable. 

In reply, Eva closed her eyes, and tears fell free.

As the king entered the stables, the horse closest to Eva circled her
before moving, slowly, away. Eva hadn’t opened her eyes, 
but she didn’t find this strange. 

The horses watched the king as he approached 
and crossed the loop of hoof prints. Eva expected him to 
wipe her tears, as he’d so often offered to do, but instead,
she felt his fingers in her hair. Without ever causing pain, 
his hands moved as if on harp strings, 
detangling each strand, reverse braiding all she hadn’t 
been able to touch, alone, for years upon years. 

Eva wept as the storm did, as the king did, 
and when she opened her eyes, all she saw was 
his face, such a mirror of her own, shadowed
by the unlit stables; both living the lifetime of the storm. 

“I tried not to pull out any hairs,” he said, voice unstable.
Eva laughed in the way that allows a voice through, 
and when she kissed him, the king didn’t think he could
want anything more tender for the remainder of his life. 

As he kissed her back, something fell
from his bag, revealing why it had appeared so full. 

A pair of silver hands. 

Eva pulled away from the king’s arms, 
her eye movements painting the pain of memory—
of silver in another time, shaped to slice and cut
away much more than hands. 

The king closed his eyes. What a mistake. 

“Eva…”

She shook her head. 

“Eva, I’m so sorry.”

She backed up against the wooden boards of the stables, 
staring through him, reliving something
he couldn’t see, tossing her head fervently. 

“I had them made for you, but I didn’t think.”
He paused. “I didn’t think at all. I fell in love
with you in this life, by which I mean: I stopped remembering
your past before I was part of it.” 

The king took another breath
and released it as he spoke.

“I still have this, but forgive me, I haven’t read it for some time.
There are parts, of course, I’ve only inferred from your words.”

From the chest pocket of his shirt, he retrieved a letter
Eva wrote a year ago—her story before the forest. 

He opened it and pressed it to his chest.

“Eva, please forgive me.”

Eva shook her head. No tears fell now.
She looked so strong in her stance
that the king nodded and turned
to leave in the thrashing storm. 

Eva swallowed hard, sucked in damp air. 

“It’s not your fault, Len.” Her voice rasped. 

King Lennon turned so fast he nearly fell.
It’d been so long since he’d heard her voice. 
Never had she spoken his name. 

“It’s never been your fault. Please,
you beat my heart most when you don’t 
treat me like it is.” 

“It’s not your fault, either,” King Lennon whispered. 

Eva nodded and whispered in return, “I know that now.” 

“Will you let me in?”

“It might not be fit for a king.”

“I love a good barn.”

They both laughed.

“Funny how a stable mirrors 
the chambers of a broken heart.”

“And there’s room for so many horses.
Let me be the first.”

Eva nodded. “Okay.”

King Lennon, on what was left
of the strength in his legs, followed
her so easily this time, as if downriver, 
and it was long past the clouds’ final flush
when they returned to the castle, 
cheeks apple-coloured. 

***

It was one month later when Retha knocked 
on a bedroom door to inform King Lennon of war
at the edge of the kingdom. When she was asked to enter, 
she fought desperately to bunker her excitement
at the thought of the king’s departure soon.

But she didn’t need to—
the first thing she saw was King Lennon’s hands 
on Eva’s thinly clothed, rounded abdomen. 

Their transparent joy stripped Retha’s bare. 
In an anger she felt ashamed to harness, 
she told the king, coldly, 
that he was to prepare for battle immediately.

The three spoke for some time, planning,
and as King Lennon readied his horse, 
he gave strict instructions. 

“As soon as our child joins you, 
our fastest rider must bring me the news.” 

If all of Retha’s organs could swallow, they did.
She was overdue home from her sabbatical.
Grateful, she didn’t have to think of much except Eva,
over and over and over again every night,
thinking fast is relative, while knowing it was 
she, Retha, who was the fastest rider on these castle grounds.

To Be Continued...