Plain•Jane•Doe

an ode to the poets there is something indecent about a poet. we drag what should have died in the dark naked onto the page. our mothers' grief. our fathers' absence. those who trusted us with their bodies but never their stories. we write them anyway. we rob the dead of their silence. make monuments of things we taught ourselves to mourn. a dress still hanging in the closet. the hollow behind a woman's knee. a kitchen with one plate. we ruin beautiful things trying to preserve them. open old wounds with dirty hands and call the damage a first draft. we spend our lives turning the people we couldn't keep into words we cannot lose. and when the world calls us beautiful for what we've written, we know exactly what we've done.

morrigan she sits where the forest has forgotten the sun. black hair falling over a dress the color of mourning. a raven pressed against her cheek like a secret the dead refused to keep. there is something ancient in the way she watches. no invitation. no apology. the woods have grown around lesser things. i would sit beside her on that rotting bench and listen to the names she has given the men who disappointed her. i suspect the raven knows them all. there is no innocence in those dark eyes. only the terrible patience of a woman who has buried every version of herself that ever begged to be loved. and still, i would reach for her. not to rescue what the forest claimed. but to find out what kind of man could survive being chosen by something so beautifully unforgiving.