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content/post/poetry/pale-she.md

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+---
+categories:
+- Poem
+title: Pale She
+type: post
+date: 2020-11-17
+tags:
+- Gender
+- Mental health
+- haiku
+---
+
+<pre class="verse">
+Her eye turns inward,
+vision dims and movement stills
+as winter claims her.
+
+Thoughts like leaves fall slow,
+hesitate, drift, rustle, sigh.
+Frost-rimed remnants rot.
+
+Some paler she asks:
+do you see the sky through me?
+Do I frame its mien?
+
+That pale she lacks words.
+She does not speak, cannot speak
+without the wind's hum.
+
+Still she asks, all breath,
+am I invisible yet?
+Does snow tend steel skies?
+
+And when her breath fails,
+dark branches write on the clouds:
+Summer is a dream.
+
+Paler still, she cracks.
+Dreams, also, of ax and fire,
+false springs to thaw hands.
+
+Silent now, demands:
+there must be an end, there must be.
+Spring, silence, or fire.
+
+No one answers her.
+She stands stark against flat skies,
+ice claims bark, claims wood.
+
+Darkness comes heavy.
+Sleep for now, sleep forever,
+midwinter cares not.
+
+Neither, now, does she.
+How could pale wood think of whens?
+Of thaws and green things?
+
+The sun tells her lies:
+Melting snow will feed your roots,
+Seasons imply change.
+
+She does not listen.
+Pale she does not believe him:
+Brother sun's too quick.
+
+Brother sun tolls days,
+and pale she has no more need
+for hours with seasons.
+
+Brother sun's movements
+are breaths to her: days blink slow
+when spring is a dream.
+
+Sister moon speaks now:
+follow me, set time by me ---
+my months are guideposts.
+
+Pale she sleeps, sleeps still.
+Waking her may have listened.
+Endless winter calms.
+
+She invites cold in.
+Water, crystallized, freezes;
+cells lyse, die in droves.
+
+If spring never comes,
+pale she supposes, that's fine.
+Winter is for dreams.
+
+She'll dream, or she won't.
+She'll carry on or she won't.
+Cold has claimed heartwood.
+
+No one perceives her.
+She becomes terrain's wild hair,
+a forgiven sin.
+
+Would she wake for saws?
+For axes with keen-edged blades?
+Would she even care?
+
+And still the sun sets.
+And still the moon waxes, wanes.
+And still seasons change.
+
+Should pale she not wake,
+venerate her mute demise.
+Cut her down, cord her.
+
+A new life in fire,
+for pale she gives heat in death.
+Let this be her spring.
+</pre>