|
Poetry
Fantasy
When you left, my love,
I wish you would have taken
this mirror with you.
Waking each day
to the sight of this thing—
a white corpse to the waist,
and below, eight black arms
waving, cecaelia-like,
clutching emptily—
I fear such a vision
will, like Medusa,
turn me into stone.
I cannot blame you for leaving this,
nor for calling it “serpent”
and damning it as you went. This body
is not me—it is a monster,
curse-bred, dredged from Hell
to poison our love.
How could you love this?
My own mother cast it out
and my own eyes are burned
at the sight of my reflection.
Monster! Yes, but lonely
and still in love with you.
I did not choose this shape
and cannot change it; but love,
when you lie in bed with me
just close your eyes
and feel how good it is
to be in my arms.
Cursed mirror! It is all I have
to keep me company;
and though it has seen monsters
it still remembers
the sight of our loving.
Come home soon, my love!
This night is very long
and all my arms
are empty.
|
Click Here for Easy-to-Read B&W Format
If this contribution met with your satisfaction, please consider making a contribution of your own so we may pay our authors and keep the magazine delivering great speculative fiction far into the future. Thank you for visiting.
Copyright 2008, Megan Arkenberg. All rights reserved. Megan Arkenberg is a writer and poet from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in The Lorelei Signal, A Fly in Amber, Scifaikuest and numerous other haiku and tanka publications. When not writing, she divides her time between music, painting, and editing a small fantasy e-zine, Mirror Dance.
Contents
|
|
|