The Handless Maiden In Verse - Part 4

Monthly poems serializing a classic tale in verse...

May 02, 2025

Dear friends,

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

Welcome to the fourth installment of The Handless Maiden in Verse! If you missed Parts 1-3, 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) An ant’s eye view of a thick tree trunk & sunlit leaves. 2) A dirt path leading into a shadowed forest. 3) A stone path among trees & grassy areas. 4) A large tree reaching into a bright blue sky. — Photos taken & shared by the wonderful Lida Pavlova (@lidapavlova_magic on Instagram).

The Handless Maiden - Part 4

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"I'm what you were promised, 
not what you wanted," Eva said
to the sound of Slyth’s shuffling
feet, reaching her before he did,
voice hoarse as she leaned 
against the apple tree. 

She held out both arms
to show him, slashed muscle
and bone sealed like sliced meat. 

A dirt tornado raged along the path
to the Miller’s house, in Slyth’s wake.
Once again, he tried
to step toward what he felt owed.

Eva closed her eyes, counting
his steps, closer and closer, to a beat
rumbling in her body—a frequency of being
Slyth didn’t know he was walking to. 

With a lineage of censorship
dampening the volume of her voice,
Eva began to sing, at first, restricting
the music's fullness to reach higher
notes softly—the way she thought she must. 

But in the same place her throat threatened
tears, she broke through its closing walls,
singing louder and louder,
clearer and clearer, unhindered
as the tears fell, freely, gathering 
into clouds above her head, pouring, 
reabsorbing, crafting music currents
for her as each drop bounced
from hair to skin to soil.

All that could be 
heard was her voice. 

Slyth stood dry, dusty, so disturbed
he couldn’t so much as cry 
with defeat as his bones powdered
and his flesh thickened
into a long, black, rope-like snake. 

You see, we manipulate others
by striking deals when we’re afraid of failing 
to meet the ones we’ve already struck. 

Slithering away, with no mind 
full of thoughts to be distraught, 
the wealth Slyth gave remained.

His last cruelty.

Eva opened her wet violet eyes. 
By instinct and memory, she moved
to wipe them with phantom hands.

Her tears dripped into the healing
wounds, instantly sealing bloody spiderwebs
of cracks, broken open by the stress 
of the last few moments. 

She shook her head to release 
the final few tears, alive on her lashes
like little bluebirds. Eva looked up
to the window, as empty as the kitchen
was warm, orange, aglow. 

She didn’t know which stabbed deeper:

the thought of her parents watching, 
from a safe distance, 
as Slyth tried to take her again, 

or 

the fact that, in their warm haze
of baking bread, above a fresh blaze,
they'd forgotten Slyth was returning today. 

She couldn’t stay. If she could be sacrificed
once, she could be again. She knew
her father had other brothers. 

At the same time, how much can be true?

A tender bed, plentiful food, and beloved books
awaited her hands inside the house

and

a home should never feel devoid of life.

Eva tilted her head to look past the apple tree, 
to the expanding dusk, darning the forest, 
knowing, that despite their appearance,
it wasn’t the trees who'd betrayed her—

the trees which continued to grow 
when her parents refused to, long ago. 

She gathered a few breaths.
Every spare branch looked like a snake.
Eva shivered with the fear that trauma leaves behind,
cleaving a residue where freedom and terror coexist.

As she crossed the threshold
of the salt circle, toes sinking into healthy grass,
Eva was struck by something not quite a memory:

another young woman, beyond ancestral blood,
who’d faced apples, forests, hunters, wickedness,

and guided by the depth of grief that cradles 
aching chests across dark forests, 

she left. 

***

Eva wandered among the woodlands 
for what could've been hundreds of years. 

The deer, robins, cardinals, and chipmunks 
woke from hibernation when they'd heard 
her singing that day, and built beds of moss 
beneath shapeshifting blankets of smooth mycelium.
They tied forked branches to Eva's wrists with roots,
to help her eat the food they caught and shared.

In return, she healed their scrapes and lifted spells 
with tears she could call on command, as one can
when with grief as they might be with child. Eva was 
enchanted to see some animals regain their forms
as faeries, nymphs, and trolls, finally
free of Slyth’s misplaced anger. 

But she was transformed, too, adopting 
the character of her new world: raw 
beauty: kindness guiding grief.

But we, you see, might have guessed
her a creature or a spirit at first glance—
our eyes have yet to adjust to the dark. 

***

On an ornate balcony, another
young woman with cropped black hair
stood, at midnight, watching
tender footsteps at the edge 
of her castle's grounds, just past the sleeping
fruit orchards and community gardens:

the forest. 

Under a full, white moon
she waited at her own edge, peering
down, under her towering balcony
into a shattered mirror
as the snow finally stopped falling.

Even in the dark, she recognized the exhaustion
of a woman bracing herself against a treeline.

To Be Continued...