I thought I heard you coming

I thought I heard you coming

Down the hall,

Your footsteps fall like rain on the window pane

But it was only the cat

Only the maid

Only the ghost.

This castle has tapestries to cover the crags

And smother the wind

As it tries to breathe,

And sometimes it whistles as breathes

And I think I hear you sighing,

But it’s never you.

I’ve been waiting a very long time at my balcony

Watching the rain fall wearily

On gray flowers and the occasional bloody poppy.

When are you coming?

Where are you now?

Have you forgotten how to find me?

I wonder as I watch the gray sky leaking more gray,

Weaving the red blooms into my hair.

My finger pricks an enchanted spindle

And I sleep a little.

A thoughtful gift from a kind witch:

A blood blossom to match my red wreath

And the respite of softly lit dreams.

I am woken, but not by you.

The morning’s kiss is enough to rouse me from my slumber.

Yet even as I walk, I am never really awake.

The mist of enchantment sleeps in my chest,

A heavy, feline presence like a bolt of smoke-cloth—

In fact, it feels a lot like you.

Yes, you’re soft now, veiled now,

I lift you off the pages in weightless filaments.

Sometimes I can hold onto you and weave you into a blanket

To wrap around myself in the dark nights while I wait for you.

Sometimes you sift through my fingers

And slip back under the Once Upon a Time.

But it was enough for me to have touched you

If only for a moment.

I think about you all the time

Until nothing is real anymore

Except you in my mind.

My mother wonders, how can I live like this?

How can I wait like this?

How will I find you if I don’t look a little?

He’ll come, I say,

I’ll know him when I see him.

There’s been a prince or two

Or a hundred

Tossing stones up at my window.

Sometimes they come with quieted fanfare,

All sodden standards, rain-mute colors

Shivering in their armor.

Are you this Princess or that Lady? They always ask,

Knowing at a glance that I am not.

I send them on their way,

Back through the woods, up the river, over the mountain pass,

A little sad and a little glad to see them go.

It wasn’t you, but it might have been.

I’ll know you when I see you.

Long nights I’ve dreamt about you,

I’ve had visions of you when I doze at my window,

Your armor smarting white

Like a snake-strike of lighting.

You flash on the horizon like a comet, like a fallen star

Too brilliant to see.

But I know what you look like.

The knights and lords who pass by

Look a little like you sometimes,

But they wear dull metal and have dull eyes.

Their smiles are earnest

But still dull.

Not everyone is bright enough to shine in this dreary place.

You are.

That is how I’ll know you.

I, the Grey Princess,

Bound to my sadness and the rain and to you,

Will know you for the lightning that comes with your presence.

In that moment when the relief of the clouds screams against the sky

And my breath rushes to join your dread thunder,

We’ll know one another, there,

In the sweeping embrace of the storm.

Until then,

I’ll wait for you at my window,

Watching for a bolt of lighting,

Listening for the thunder,

Weaving and unweaving wreaths of red poppies

Humming snatches of old lullabies,

Singing myself slowly to sleep.