2. The Crime

Illustration

" I was the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter, and the future queen of my kingdom.

For this I was adored, and polished like a valuable jewel.

I was beautiful. Too beautiful; this was a crime.



Every day, they milked the golden yolk from the daisies and oiled my hair from scalp to the tips,

to make it gleam like strands of pure spun gold.

They rubbed emeralds into my eyes so they glittered like the dust of grasshopper wings.

I was bathed in apricot milk and perfume distilled from cotton.

I drank from the goblets of beetle wings and dined from plates of ruby slivers.



I was too beautiful; this was a crime.



A winged prince came to me, cloaked in the velvet of the night.

He uttered words into my ears soft as spun sugar.

He kissed my golden brows, my carnelian-stained lips, my bejeweled lobes;

He loved me, and embraced me with the span of his great white wings.

Before long, my womb became swollen to make room his child growing within.



A maiden was with a child; this was a crime.



They shunned me to a tower, so tall that it reached the skies.

Its mortar was crushed hydrangeas, and the brick was crushed plums and purple clam shells.

They plaited my hair so that it may reach the ground.

If any prince was merciful enough to take for his wife a girl impregnated by demons,

then they may climb the golden rope to take me.

But no princes came, and although my hair reached out to the earth, I reached out to the heavens.

I waited for my winged prince to swoop down and claim me.



I waited.



Moths with golden-green wings flew up to the tower in great swarms,

thinking that the tower made with mortars of hydrangeas contained the sweet nectars to quench their thirst.

I caught them with my bare hands and drank their golden juice.

And the lives inside me grew with each moon-

for I knew that the wretched parasites in my womb were not one child, but two;

and I wept for not one wretched life but two wretched, miserable lives.



I hated my children; was this a crime?"