VVITCH
A poem
A sage cage around her beaten skin.
The dress slips from her shoulders
Like dry flowers leave the trees.
The old and the new stitches on the fabric
Match the old and new scars on her feet.
A copper crown of hair surrounds her head;
Her thoughts in line and sharpened at the ends.
Not snakes like Medusa, she does not care for stones; statues are for the rich and timeless.
No, it resembles the humble needles of a seamstress, freezing, selling comfort for food, clothes for a home.
A naked, barren seamstress, hands working but never full.
Life passing her by like the wool, always attached to something else despite her labour.
Rosemary withered, the prairie empty and dry.
She steps onto it like a naive finger lands on a wooden splinter.
It hurts to walk. It hurts to outlive the land.
She was made for flowerbeds to signal her departure, for foreign fruits to sprout from her hands.
She wanted to be buried with dozens of seeds, she wanted to feed the mouths of the starving.
Yet, she was still living.
Her sickened, pale body mirrored the moon like a river.
For the drought of the Earth, she was the monsoon.
Soaked in oils and fat, petals and animals and people would stick to the hips and the legs.
They would stick and eat and feast on her harvest.
They would leave her parched.
The oak tree was rough like the hands of gone men.
It did not fly. It did not sink.
The weeping willow was much more gentle in its sorrow.
Beneath its long, languid leaves, a hothouse; a puddle of sweat under her steamed skin.
Mushrooms rooted in her ankles, the organic wings of Hermes.
Her thighs commanded the branches, the willow gave in to her desire to fly, hundreds of years tamed by her urge to leave.
The cracks between the fields blew a hurricane, the breath of the Mother, exhausted, pushing her last child from the nest into the darkest sky.
Fly, woman. Fly.
© 2021, Giulia de Gregorio Listo. All Rights Reserved
