Erin Rodoni

The poem begins with us surviving

the collapse, the mass extinction, in the clearing
of an ever-after. The poem fairytales the little cottage,
the silver stream. A trail of crumbs, snow-white
in redwoods, guides us homeward
from our daily scavenging. We could live there
couldn’t we? For whatever forever
we have left? But I can’t get past the damn blood
my daughter needs transfused into her veins.
Once she woke ashen, blue edged her lips.
They said yes bring her, bring her quick.
We were two hours from the hospital and the poem stalls
while I remember that drive through the false dusk
of redwoods, the daggers of sunlight I squinted against,
trying not to submit to the tangle of panic.
What if the hospital were a ruin
of vermin and vine? The phone lines choked
with lichen. Our trail of crumbs indistinguishable
from ash. In the shadow of an ever-after,
the desperate parent submits to the terms
of the witch. The life-for-life trade,
for mercy, for magic. The poem bewitches.
I could pierce my own artery and not pass out.
Recite a spell to charm my blood serpentine.
Or to summon a wolf. In the poem, he lowers
his heart to my blade. In the poem, it beats
the blush back to her cheeks. Yes, I can write that
fierce moonlight, prowl of star on ice, right
into her bloodstream. But the poem always ends
with the princess white as snow. It is winter.
We are more alone than we have ever been.