Hilary Gan

Today is the day someone else’s Messiah rose
to deteriorate finally into a figure on a small wood cross in the attic
waiting for a final coat of varnish.
How many years before He is brought into the light?
How many poor remedies prescribed by the village witch?
How many broken farmers’ fields sown with salt?
 
I have trudged miles, scanning the horizon looking for the salt
of the earth, for a solitary rose
but underneath my feet the plants wither; I am a witch
devoid of craft — a cackling granny given distant lodging in the attic —
sunspots on my face and liverspots on my hands from too many years in the wrong light —
my body a boat’s figurehead with deep folds the color of varnish
 
Oh, and what varnish!
Slice me and barrel me and salt
me down in trust for next year’s famine, tie me in a kerchief for a light
snack on the road. I wear my years on my face. I am one who never rose
beyond my circumstance. An average life was my house’s attic.
Daughter of a witch,
 
Now mother to a witch —
Yes, she is, and all that witching entails. I will not varnish
the truth. Ever since that day on the attic
stairs I have known her soul to be a pillar of salt.
Children never imagine their mothers on the receiving end of a rose —
Young, and standing in a parlor filled with afternoon light —
 
But I had thirty years before I even invented her name, ambition a fiery light
burning in my uncanny witch
heart, my hair dark as night and my cheeks a dusty rose
the late flowers of fall my beauty’s only varnish
striving like a Roman soldier for my bag of salt
howling at the stars, shouting my body’s defiance into the attic
 
of heaven. Begging my Lord above to come down from His attic
dwelling and grant me a spark of His light — !
But the saltiness has gone out of this salt.
And I am no longer even a witch
I am a broken table, a grey streak of wood worn of its varnish,
a dried and pressed and colorless rose
 
found between yellowed pages, too light for life, an inefficacious witch’s
brew. I go soon to His attic; and my beauty’s varnish
now will be the stillness of the great dead sea, the salt of purity; soon He prunes the rose.

HILARY GAN lives in St. Louis, MO, with her D&D-playing husband and terrifyingly curious infant daughter. After stints as an ecologist, line cook, candlemaker, package tester, and museum educator, she has settled into library work. Find more of her fiction and essays at www.hilarygan.com.