Wren Tuatha

It’s a box that grins softly to be opened,
as if the last bite of chocolate were inside,
the bite I amble toward
as if I don’t need it,
as if I’m only finishing what I started…

It’s a box with the flaps lazing on one another,
squares with curved souls
and dark recesses,
lightweight, liftable folds.
Only paper…

And the lifting is a soundless opera
extolling the seven stages of indecision—
temptation/guilt/negotiation/guilt/resolve/renegotiation/squinting.

The folds peel
and the light advances like an army
following orders without flinching,
rolls in like an ocean obeying
the laws of water in dry places.
And the darkness, like a vampire’s cape,
like Peter Pan’s shadow grown up,
abandons the folds as they surrender,
fainting, hanging like laundry.

And there it is,
small for the box,
the dark, bittersweet
chocolate of truth.

Wren Tuatha’s poetry has appeared in Baltimore Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Loch Raven Review, Clover A Literary Rag, Driftwood Press, Lavender Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Avatar Review, Five2One Magazine, and the anthology Grease and Tears. Wren and her partner, author/activist C.T. Lawrence Butler, herd skeptical goats on a mountain in California.