Size Writes

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
of her bones are coral made. When we write,
when we want, we create: the wrong thing.
Every book is thick with invisible footnotes
that read “The author is wrong about this.”
“They’re doing the best that they can. Humor them.”
Case in point: fairies are not born from
the laughter of babies, who laugh all the time.
They haven’t yet learned the proper responses
to the serious world. If fairies were born
from a baby’s laugh we would be fighting
through clouds of them, our umbrellas would be made
of steel, or of mirrors, to protect, to reflect
all the magic spilled on us from their tiny hands.

When I want to write I bravely sit down to write.
What comes out is half-remembered
from something stuck in the corner of the eye.
When I write I am carved out from being, I try to describe
the hole, the light that has withdrawn, the exact dimensions
of the infinite dark space around me, or my own cortical void.
Soon my mistress alights upon the page to read.
Their wings are shell pink, bleached reef bone white.
Their smile is small bright rhinestone. They pause,
they laugh. “Don’t you know the color of my eyes?” Oh honey,
oh my darling fairy love, they are too small to see.
They are too small to see and I’m doing the best that I can.