by M. Weigel
How You Transform Women’s Stories
Some of you claim I danced in iron shoes.
You must really hate women.
Twisting our tale to make the women fight to cover up male shame is beneath even you.
My daughter and I deserve far better than your obsession with her pale skin and my wrath.
Yes, my stepdaughter was born with skin like ivory, hair like night, and garnet lips.
She was three when I married her father.
Snow White called me Mother; I called her Daughter.
To imply anything else is absurd.
For a decade, the king came to my bed.
I lost two children before they drew breath, but
when the fever took my son, my husband’s mind broke.
Funny how you always leave out women’s pain when you tell our story.
Yes, my mirror was magic. No, I did not ask about my beauty.
I had power, servants, and expensive creams.
Courtiers called me the most beautiful woman in existence when they wanted something.
The servant in the glass helped me watch for threats from sycophants.
Consider my pain when the mirror spoke of the worst possible enemy.
“My Queen, beware the king. Beware how he lusts after his daughter.”
From then on, I could see how he watched her and how she shrank away.
I spied on the Council of Advisors. They drew up paperwork for me to be set aside.
They told lies that the king’s first wife had cursed him to marry someone too much like her.
Our lack of an heir was proof of the broken vow.
These men would torture my child to accommodate their king.
I entered her rooms to find my girl ready to take poison.
“Has he hurt you?” I asked.
She shook her head and wept in my arms for hours.
“I have a plan that will save us both.
I’ll write the nuns tonight.”
I agreed to be sent away, calmly and without protest, so they did not care where I went.
Dressed as an old woman, I returned in disguise and worked to save my child.
Snow begged for elaborate gowns based on the sun and the moon to stall for time.
The huntsman who supplied the animal skins for the final dress also took her to the convent.
The seven sisters lived deep in the woods.
Calling hard working women dwarves is misogyny.
They protected my daughter for years while her father scoured the land.
I visited when I could, bringing a new comb or a pretty dress, anything to make her smile.
Over the years, I negotiated a treaty and a plan with the kingdom next door.
When my girl was sixteen, the prince visited her once a month.
The nuns made protective chaperons.
At eighteen, my child was ready for marriage, a throne, and my revenge.
She married the prince, and then we announced her death.
The nuns guarded a casket of glass with a beautiful maiden appearing to sleep.
The King came and wept. He did not repent, and
he accepted the poisoned apple slices I offered him.
Without a monarch, the Council of Advisors greeted my daughter and her husband.
She had them arrested and then set on fire.
Old perverse men danced in iron shoes they once forged for me.
I live in a separate castle, see my grandchildren, and teach the heir magic.
The mirror keeps watch: it sees your hatred of intelligent women and the hidden knives.
My daughter, Snow White, will live long and rule well.
Our family survives, whole, healthy, and strong.
Why is a story of women helping women so hard for you to accept?
The Sparrows Know
The sparrows saw the angry man plaster
on a charming smile. They tweeted mating calls
as he brought flowers and spoke smooth words.
Sitting on the roof, one witnessed the carefully
orchestrated proposal. One sang in sorrow about
a stolen egg just as he carried his new bride
across the threshold.
The sparrows heard the shouting.
They sometimes stopped singing, startled
by raised voices, a slammed door, or a muffled cry.
They left brown feathers so the young bride would know
she was not alone. They noted the bruises. They sang
songs of comfort and did not gossip
about the woman’s suffering.
The sparrows ate the breadcrumbs the battered wife
threw off the porch. They noted her father, the apothecary,
and his anger. Peaking in the window, one saw the foul-smelling
vial. The birds sang quietly, pausing to note the pouring
of the drink and chirped to celebrate the calculated scream.
The sparrows sang for themselves and
in honor of justice served.
The Nightmare of the Sky
At first, we only knew the deep brown of soil.
We smelled water in every breath, and we lived in tandem.
Always touching and connected by tentative lines, we only knew existence.
Sleep occurred often, and then one of us dreamed.
In that vision, our ancestor witnessed emergence.
It pushed the warm soil away and met cold air.
The green of being was no longer enough, and it created leaves to feel the wind.
Celebrating this freedom meant creating blossoms of white, purple, and yellow.
The progenitor sang along our roots, and soon we all longed to see the sky.
The push and pull as each sought light led to confusion and separation.
We formed dense units. Sleeping often, we saved our energy for desperate surges upward.
Generations stretched, dreaming of the sun as they collapsed spent for the year.
Then our solo and collective efforts were rewarded.
The first of our kind pushed up and fell into the soft air.
Our first white bloom of celebration was ripped away by cruel winter winds.
Sleepy hedgehogs told us to wait for the snows to melt.
Our advance guard met snow and ice, but still we climbed.
The network told stories of light and warmth.
We cuddled the hedgehog as we pushed past to meet the succulent air.
Discovering the sweetness within us, each generation pushed harder.
We celebrated as single bulbs in the network blowing in the breeze.
Enjoying the snuffles of wolves and dreading nibbles from squirrels,
the surge and the dance were what we knew.
We sent our young sideways to shorten their quests.
Then ones came who were not content to only admire us, and we knew the pain of knives.
Pulled from our earth or cut with sharp blades, we suffered.
They cultivated us, tricking us to bloom rather than sleep,
playfully arranging our corpses in vases to mark the end of winter.
We screamed. Then we learned to stop. We whispered across our networks.
The survivors dreamed of safety. Recalling the security of deep earth, we remembered
the embrace long abandoned. We collectively imagined cocoons
within the deep brown soil. We changed the messages to our young:
“They command we seek the air, but once the leaves and colors fade,
seek the warmth of a core you cannot remember. Push down.
Each year, sink lower. Race away to safety dear ones. Eventually, you will forgo the light.
Find freedom in the earth’s embrace.
Search the darkness for the other lone souls.
Connect to them. Merge and dance as we once did.
Turn as we did when we did not yet know snow.
Kill any hedgehog down that far, and let the rich blood nourish you.”
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