The Hopkins Review

So this was the wider world: a tiny British backyard choked with what might be weed

or might not—I wasn’t sure. Flowers were things you cut down and brought inside to watch them die.

The blackbird, if that’s what he was, kept one eye on a cathedral of cloud, the other on his drab mate.

Almost summer, almost dawn, as if a page were about to turn: was this how a story started

or the way it ended? The female searched, but not for food. Up to the house, she skittered, untamed, unapproachable.

From the doormat, she pulled another tuft: time for the second brood of the season. Was she mending a nest or starting over?

Peonies, so ponderous with petal, so jeweled with dew, they couldn’t stand up to the sun, fell down to the grass. [End Page 593]

Like a book left out in the open, blossoms swelled and spilled, pages foxing as they came unbound.

Pages faded, losing their place: in a corner of the kitchen, I sat where minor characters do.

I was the scullery maid, brought to life in a single sentence of Sleeping Beauty, then sent off to sleep for a century.

Tears would dry on her cheek, the cruel world of an onion roll from a hand gone slack.

And then one day, Love would sweep through, looking for Beauty in a grander room: You open your eyes. A strange man leans over you.

In the beginning. For a while. [End Page 594]