Bemired, your neck strangled with lobelias,
I see your pallor staring starkly back at me
from every swimming hole, from every pool, Ophelia.
-“The Broken Doll,” Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (translated from Irish)
Willow branches scratched
wrists and dug deep
into that empty space
reserved for your
midnight-sweat, when
your hot doubts
exhaled poison and
plundered my virgin-breath
until it came in gasps.
I wove the garland
with my own hands
that would anoint the
crown of your head
and call you mine—
possession at a
queenly pinnacle
of gossamer veils and
stolen kisses
by the poolside.
When I fell, I thought it was
to you. My sleeves
bore me up and
I called to you in a
siren-song of broken bells,
a screeching bridal prayer
bemired with mud,
hair streaming like ribbons
in the pool’s glassy eye.
But you didn’t come.
Flowers wept,
columbines bending to
touch my outstretched hand.
Savior-prince, where were you
when the withered violets
rippled alongside me,
when I tumbled from the
foot of the bed and
gained luminescent gills?
I sank into the lake of your
princely mind,
swam for shore in a
trail of lapis lazuli
and went
unquietly.