Emerald Veil

Bound by love, Snow White’s body beams
like a second moon, her aura braided with her husband’s,
deep in dusk, the tree limbs haloed by bats.

The next morning, she wakes with an oval of pink bumps
on her inner thighs & her husband, Florian, has vanished.
Mrs. White’s ear pulses for the baritone of her love,

only to heed murmurs of poppies pleading. She prays
to them for a solution. Unshod, thinned skin
bulging with veins, Snow White scampers

through the forest to the dome of a hill.
The bats grin, but she’s too frail to appreciate it.
She clasps her hands: Amén. Mushroom heads slope

in sympathy, while realms away, Florian, powdered
in pollen and encaved, wails Love. White’s rash crimsons
& her bones cushion weak. Florian’s throat is closing

as if pythons, an imminent unknown, have noosed it shut.
Snow White is sloth-slow & pained. A bat flutters over a branch
while her Florian holds his last memory of her breath

on his beard & speaks her name, now housed in his. Did I commit
culpa for such evil? Is this my end? Shh, dusk bruises the sky.
Bats invade the cave, rage around him, nick & slit his skin,

his exhausted arms carouseling an unseeable space.
Snow White pushes to a high poppy cliff, making
final strokes toward the edge, closer to her god.

Por favor, Señor, por favor, cure me back
to my blueberry home, drop the sword on the neck
of the unknown. Hurling off bats, Florian staggers

out of the cave hole. My Lord, drizzle stars
on the darkest night. Snow White lays her head
on a small boulder, a waiting headstone, & sings

notes to a moon-moth. The wind
howls with remorse & blows off bats, like winter
tossing sparrows. Florian topples

near a spring. The next morning, ube-hued,
Snow White wakes with the moth on her nose,
singing the same sultry tune as the night before.

Melody saturates her as slowly her skin
reverts to normal. Snow White rises as if
cousin to a cloud; Florian washes the blood

from his nose while bats are tossed about the coast.
A pixie peers from the pasture, beckons Snow White:
Envious were the bats, who had the power

to curse you both, for they can only love in the dark,
not in the light like you. Florian too had his curse reversed;
barely blemished, he searches out Snow White,

smooths his hand around hers & slips her
red hairband where it belongs—both believing
that if evil hushes, it hushes as its swords slide deep.