Perrault's Fault
by Elizabeth Sochko Hussain
What now doesn’t hinge on beauty? A singular, token rose. Inventory taken
far, far away. Fraught hibernation. A ship slinking off in the night. And who
said the pattern would be pretty? I fell in the shadow, I fell in the pool, I followed
the field to the field’s edge. Walked back. What else was there to do?
Drink raw milk. Eat rice pudding, onion jam. Normandie was consumable.
I was consumed by breeze, by black grit beneath his nails. Tell me
what is the difference? Both gave me a chill. Tell me which part hurts
most when you touch it? A simple story. Touch it. A girl longs for the sea.
Turns blindly toward her surprise ending, an irresistible spindle.
There are apple trees and you will eat the apples. There are whole, vanishing
afternoons spent bending. Pick up what belongs to him. Symbolism renders me
expressionless; it’s not Perrault’s fault. My blank, slack jaw. Loitering, what
gilded recklessness. Once upon a time there was a fisherman. A simple story.
When you disappear into the ocean, I can feel it still.
Elizabeth Sochko Hussain received her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, where she worked as a poetry editor for LUMINA. Her poems have been published in Red Wheelbarrow (forthcoming), Columbia Journal, Quarterly West, Columbia Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Originally from South Carolina, she now lives in Los Angeles.