Editor's Note: Originally published in 2011, author Rachel Ayers' lyrical poem sets the stage for the reader's imagination to feel the longing in this well known fairy tale.
He found her dead
and woke her.
Snow, blood, ebony:
these evoke only the
lifeless child he beheld.
He reimagines his bride.
Her lips are posey red,
rosy red,
for although flowers are fleeting
they live
as he brought her back to life.
Her skin is milkpale moonglow.
And black is:
the deep pool
of his horse's eye
or:
the well
of night sky
or:
the depths of earth
from which all life springs.
These gifts he gives her as they wed:
a second chance,
and his heart,
still beating.
Rachel Ayers has a Creative Writing major from Pittsburg State University. Her novelette "Sister and Serpent" won Honorable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, and her story "Job Hunting" won First Prize in the 2010 HarperCollins Radiant Prose contest.
Cover: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff
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