Through tangled wight-lit
weald she wends, one hand
on veinous sword
For in this boscage
fiend does grow, in bile-
brimmed pustules nest.

Beware the night wood,
bladed lady, it’s paths
do twist and gambol
And hellions of the dim
do know its ev’ry
maze-cursed bent.

“Oh come to me!” she
sings out high, into
aphotic brake.
“My vein-sword fears no
devilry. No imp or
soul-baned blight.”

With ringing snick her
blade does flick, to warble
through the murk.
It’s long vein fills
with fiend-blood spilled
from conniving lurk.

Beware the night wood
bladed lady, though first
foe has fallen.
There are still miles
of treachery afore
you find your love.

The dim around her
quickly thickens, with
creatures best not named.
They have come squelching
from fetid pool, from
rotted bole and fen.

Too many for a
veinous sword swung by
skillful warrior,
though still she stands, her
shoulders square, to face
the squalling din.

“Halt!” Calls a voice of
crackling ice from grim
and toothy smile.
“I’ve come to proffer,
lady knight, a means
for your escape.

“Your maiden fair, within
my lair has pressed on
me a wager.
If in fair combat,
I take your life,
she’ll be mine forever.

“And if in turn I
am the one who falls
in ****** failure.
You’ll be hers till
end of time, your strength
ever greater.”

Beware the night wood,
bladed lady, and of
deals forged in the dark.
Though bound by word,
wise ones know, the Night King
can’t be trusted.

For quite a time the
lady hummed in careful
deliberation.
The night-king watched
motionless for her
tiny grim-faced nod.

Then with ringing snick
blades did flick, and warble
through the murk
and history’s greatest
battle was fought for
ghouls within the dark.

When the Night King fell
it was with
a subtle grin of triumph
As fiend applied a
black-thorn crown to
lady’s sweat-streaked brow.

The bladed lady
did achieve
her heart’s earnest goal.
She was wed, ‘neath
dripping bough to the
one she’d come to find.

But while in death, her
foe was free, she
could never leave.
From deepest copse
she still rules, Night Queen
of the night wood.

I have been practicing form
with many curls of graphite on paper
between soft blue and white lines
scratching hollow hearts in repetition
until they bend into V’s:
that very shape children turn birds into.

Careful and careless with my heart
as I am with the storm cloud of little ones
on my pages
flurried into place by my absent mind
I am absent
I am filled to my throat with smoke,
the desire to take flight,
absent in thoughts of you.

The shape of an arrowhead,
Eros’ penetrating tip.
The angle of a woman’s *******.
The bend of a wishbone ready to snap.
These could all be called
the shape of love

but my love will always be a bird too high, a V windbound,
that I will pin to my fridge with a magnet
and look at every other Sunday
when I remember it.

Sweet fae doll,
dressed up in all soft perfume and glitter
to make you look alive.
Like a dragonfly on a downwards spiral,
or a sheen of blood on a white marble floor,
the glitter in the corners of your eyes shines.

I wear sweet absinthe on my lips
and dark rings under my eyes
and I wonder- do you ever look like me too?
Do you ever cry at night?
Is your radiance merely an illusion
to be robbed by the moon?

Do you not exist until someone sees you,
little quantum illusion?
I wish, I wish, I wish
my face would crystallize and shine
and the resonance deep within
would be forgotten under shadows.

Today I think I will
carve a little heart into my neck
as a memoir
of when you bit me there
and I licked the blood from your lips.