Tell Me Everything

"Tell me everything," you said.
"Let's have no secrets between us."
Then you sent your ten sorceresses--
four around the hill, with one at the crest,
three together in the garden at rest,
and two down into the valley. Such beautiful dancers, these.

My name is Melusine,
a love letter written on wine-dark pages,
sealed in a jewelry box with a serpent in gold at the edges.
You were a spilled apple bushel,
not realizing that it is the seed, not the fruit that matters.
What was it in the one thing I asked you not to do,
not to know,
that made you so keen and cruel to know?

Not cruel to me, though I am angry; though I am gone.
You undid yourself, making me the instrument of it.
Don't you get it?
I asked only to be left alone at my bath,
that I might bobble the skulls of all my old loves
and wind around them in clumsy recompense.

The next time you come to a locked door, remember me.
Wind a grape vine around your hair,
wind the hemp and kick the chair,
do anything to give yourself a moment to think--
then, my used-to-be darling,
open that idiot mouth of yours
and swallow that forged metal apple, the key.
_______

For Magpie #258.

Thank you to Hedgewitch, for making me think of Melusine.