Jeannine Hall Gailey
ENCHANTMENT
It would be easier to begin
if you believe I was enchanted.
Laid in a glass box, motionless, lips blue
or sleeping for a hundred years in a hidden castle,
or growing out my hair in a tower.
It would be easier, because then the poisons
in my veins would be simpler, the spinning wheel and
the spells cast against me part of a story
that always ends somehow in a wedding dress.
Because my wedding dress is getting older
in a box in the basement, my hair refuses to budge
even one inch and I refuse to remain still
in a glass coffin any longer than I have to.
The MRI tubes serve as symbol – to be buried,
to be reborn again, from the blackness.
I told you that my heart had been stopped,
my lungs slowed, the dreams ticking away
inside me starting to replace actual life,
actual motion. Here is a chair, not a throne,
pink with ribbons, that wheels me from place
to place. Here is the fair husband, who holds my hand
as a spin and fall, as I tremble with each step.
I could tell you otherwise; I could give you
a happier ending. The conversation might be –
middle daughter, made a mistake, ended up lost in the woods.
The youngest traveled farthest, to the end of the earth,
brought home the miniature dog in a walnut shell,
the silk scarf thin as cloud, the coat of many furs,
the charmed ring, fulfilled the prophecy, ended up
a tree, a cow, a white bird. The ending always a surprise –
behead the white cat to find a princess in disguise,
the mute queen burned at the stake by villagers rescued by swans.
The mythology prescribes magic, so I will wait here,
motionless, the needles and prescriptions piling
like dark hedges around the palace,
miracles perhaps hiding right before our eyes.