Page 63 of Into the Heartless Wood
begin to shriek and crack.
They do not answer to my mother,
so she kills them from afar.
This can no longer be our sanctuary.
I say: “Ready to devour your world.”
He stands solemn and unflinching. “I will not let her.”
“You cannot stop her. No one can.”
He steps close to me.
He raises tentative fingers
to coil around a strand of my hair.
He says: “Not even you?”
“I am the weakest of all of my sisters.”
He touches my face and
I feel every point
of his fingers.
He says: “You are the strongest of them all. How else could you have become more than what your mother made you?”
“I am not more.”
He cups my cheek. “You are.”
I am unnerved by the look in his eyes. I pull away.
Below us, my trees pluck up their own roots
and shrivel under the stars.
We are exposed.
My sisters might come at any moment. My mother might come.
There will be no more meetings on this hill.
There will be no more meetings at all.
This is the night
I
will
lose
him.
