[Snow White]
do you have scars / if not the hurt is mostly imagined. slash of blood against snow and who would wish for a child "red as blood"—pretty words, but the daughter suffers. When I was young I loved ____, now I love ____, and in between salt air, eclipse, the tinny rust of each year's puncture. "As white as snow as red as blood"—I'd include more news if I knew it. For she was a thin little thing, hardly more than a peep coming from that carmine mouth— yes ma'am, I'd like to bite the shiny apple, please. A disease will fill the airwaves until spring and then a girl and then a war. "And black as ebony." Mother, you had your wishes, all three. And then you die and she is running through midnight woods while the most beautiful woman in the world salts and peppers the heart & lungs she leaves behind.
From Find the Girl by Lightsey Darst. Copyright © 2010 by Lightsey Darst. Used by permission of Coffee House Press.