The Winter Witch

The Winter Witch takes in an injured phonograph record;
She could not bear to see a sister suffer.

All phonograph records are, of course, female.
Constellations, rain, roundabouts, all of these fall from the fingertips of the Goddess.

Men are as linear as the stories they like.
Trains, bullets, unwavering logic, all of these are spikes driven into a brick wall.

Women are round, and all begins inside their roundness.
Stars wheel in empathic dance with the Winter Witch's turntable.

But...I have said that her guest was wounded, and so she was.
A red polished nail in the groove brought sweetness, but also revealed broken blackness.

"Poor baby," soothed the Witch, and the world turned beneath them both;
It always does. All stories double back. Clocks obey the soft word, not the strident command.

The injured phonograph record could not be saved, but she could speak, and did so.
The Winter Witch lay down inside her, and called that night. She dreamed with a double voice.

"I don't understand a word you say," complained the Warlock, after that.
"Bless your heart," said the Winter Witch, and when she did, she sounded like the wind.
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