My daughter has a taste for the gothic.
I often work too much and confuse
simple things, so I make up jumbled
stories for her based off of fairytales.
Her favorite is the one about the seamstress
and the beast. The seamstress was
a tragic girl who escaped the confines
of her evil mother by riding deep
into the forest on a massive, white horse.
When the horse died, the seamstress made
a rocking chair out of its bones and often
sat there, rocking back and forth, sewing
sad dresses out of the shadows of birds
that slid over the snow. I sit next to her
and repeat the story each night until she
falls asleep as I talk in the dark. When I
come home from work, she often grabs
my wrist and chants, beast, beast, beast.
