A to Z Challenge: G is for Gwenhwyfach

What stronger hate is there than that between sisters? Sister mine, you who were fair of face and voice, you had the heart of king and the love of a hero. You braided them into your hair with anchoring knots, like pretty playthings to decorate your beauty. You had no understanding of the hearts of men.

Was it not enough to be Queen? Was it not enough to know the love of a great man? While other women scrapped at the smallest plot of land that they may survive the winter, you held grand feasts and laughed as men fell over themselves to entertain you. You were always a simpering little fool. 

They call that slap one of the "Three Harmful Blows of the Island of Britain." I can still feel the sting of my palm against your smooth cheek. They say I am the one who began it, but it was you, dear sister. You threw away a king and a kingdom for your childish ideals. You threw the greatest kingdom on God's good Earth into peril for what? Piercing eyes and a handsome face?

A king lies dead at your feet and you flit off to France. Were it not for you, the king would be on his throne. Were it not for you, his blood would not water the ground of Britain. Were it not for you, I would have been happy.

Instead your folly unleashed a flood that swept through our land, scouring her clean of good men and hope. Death followed on your heels as you danced heedlessly into the arms of another. You spoke of love as if that had anything to do with it. As if love justified the destruction of a great man and his kingdom. As if love was enough.

Three things are not easily restrained, the flow of a torrent, the flight of an arrow, and the tongue of a fool.

A to Z Challenge: E is for Elflock

I wake with tangles in my hair. My grandmother would blame the fairies who sneak into young girls' rooms at night. My grandmother with the small, strong hands and the lilting accent of the old world. My grandmother who set a bowl of milk out every night for the elvish folk. I think they followed her to this land of skyscrapers and nine-to-fives. They wove themselves into her long silver braids and slipped over the waves to this land of opportunity and shallow roots.

Women like my grandmother bring her roots with her. She held the stories of generations in her breast and whispered them to me for bed time stories. Her father, my great grandfather, was the seventh son of a seventh son. Tall and brilliantly blonde, he slayed monstrous beasts and bested unjust kings. Her mother was a changeling, a fae child small and dark. She worked magic in the between spaces and the earth flowered at her touch. My ancestors. My mythology.

These little secrets were whispered to me as I fell asleep and in that between space - between awake and dreaming - the fairies took root. They grew through my limbs and mind and now my lips whisper their stories. My pen draws their faces and wings and tangled hair. And I see them, from the corner of my eye. From the edge of a shadow or in the glare of a bright light. I see them as I fall asleep and I hear their whispers before I wake to find their knots in my hair.

Each morning I brush my hair gently, undoing their night's work. My hair has started to silver now, like my grandmother's. And like my grandmother, I brush and brush, then plait my hair in a thick rope down my back. The hair has an ombre effect now, silver shimmering down into dark black, the color my youth. Dark and fae like my mother and her mother before her and her mother before her. On and on and back to an elvish woman who chose death and love over eternal life.

And forward onto my own granddaughter who sleeps and is visited by the fairy folk. At night, I sit beside her and whisper the roots into her ears. I see the stories grow as her eyes grow bigger and she falls asleep with the whispers of her ancestors and their magic. She wakes, her dark hair tangled around her face. And the roots live on. Across oceans and time. Despite routines and grocery stores and electricity bills. Magic lives in the blood and feeds on stories and I am a gentle gardener.

A to Z Challenge: C is for Calliope

They cry out for me as to a god,

As though creation is external.

Do not, dear mortals, be over-awed

For heads unfit still wear the laurel.

"Calliope!" My name has grown vast

Beyond the edges of my own ken.

The romance of myth, of ages past

Of what once was and what might have been.

Story itself has christened me 'muse'

And has thrust upon me this burden

Of inspiration, the spark and fuse.

What of the path that I determine?

For I was a mother long ago

And bore a son of most brilliant light.

I taught him words of strength - my sorrow!

For my lesson brought this lasting night.

The beauty of his words laid him low

Torn apart by jealousy and hate.

That was the harvest of my furrow!

What cruel twist - this irony of fate.

Muse, oh Muse! They exalt me on high,

Begging, pleading for a spark of grace.

For words they live, but by words they die

And leave forever mother's embrace

So call not to muses nor idols nor gods;
Rather look within for the path yet untrod.

Thanks everyone for reading my blog. I'm never really sure how what I write will be received, but I appreciate all of the encouragement I've been getting so far! Please keep reading and I promise there won't be too much in the way of archaic poetry (well... I say promise...)