Your eyes are familiar: purple like the skin of a fruit she’s bitten— In another life, this girl addressed you and undressed you without hesitation but in this one, she rocks her loneliness until the Fates grant her some unwinding. The spell says first she must dig in the black dirt, pull up the nightshade, replace it bread salt brandy let the hole devour these gifts then shovel the dirt back over, bury that which she offers up. The spell says she must trek for home, moist ground mucking up her shoes. The spell says she must not speak on the way across the field. She must not speak until the hearth greets her. Then she may think how both now must be joined. The spell says to grind the leaves, boil them down, drop that tea in the eyes. The spell promises they will grow wide and beautiful—bella donna—she will blink the power of the root. The spell says you will not be able to look away.
What boils down beauty is the cauldron of odious comparisons and the flaming conviction you failed to brew the right concoction (that erstwhile love spell turnstile). But damn toil and trouble—if you walk away somnambulant, you leave the burners on. Don’t be a slow learner of the physics of scorching. Don’t choose to simmer like some shy incarnate. Doubledown willingly. Own it, go for broke! Hold open the oven door and throw your own fool self in, devising the very worst hell of heat. Succumb to all those imagined defeats: melt, spill over, explode— then navigate char. Rise, bare-boned, purified, out of smoke.
According to tradition, it’s bad luck to refuse your kiss under the mistletoe. Six drupes means six times the tip of your tongue should hover in the innermost corner of my mouth. And though I am curious about the taste your lips might bring, I also wonder how many tainted berries brought you to linger here, with the likes of me. How many presents have you already unwrapped, how often have your fingers folded back paper —or choked up girls with ribbon? I’d like to stand here—instead— on the threshold of your potential gifts, rather than sweat in stifling rooms, heady on spice and wool, tradition hanging down above us. Maybe later you can pull me out to where the crisp air cools this blush. Maybe later, it will be enough to stare together at houses that shine like beacons sugared with snow. And then, if you lay your hand to my throat, then, under no eaves or fabrication, it may be just enough to close our eyes, to wait, to hold still.
Christine Butterworth-McDermott’s latest poetry collection is Evelyn As (Fomite, 2019). She is the founder and co-editor of Gingerbread House Literary Magazine. Her poetry has been published in such journals as Alaska Quarterly Review, The Normal School, The Massachusetts Review, and River Styx, among others.
Bryan Buckley is a photographer and metal fabricator in Massachusetts.
