Snow White’s Mother’s Curse

Perhaps it was the pain of a child three days in coming,
or the final realization that the coming would kill her,
that brought the curse to the lips of the dying queen,
but queens are made queens by beauty
and both beauties and queens are vain by nature,
so the dying queen must have seen as her shape got lost
and the lines like scars on her stomach grew wider and spread
she would never be perfect again in the eyes of the king,
so perhaps the curse was a long time coming,
and the birth itself just the last chance to do it,
perhaps it was said in the darkness
moon up & moon down, relentless,
“Hecate goddess of Witches, take this thing from me!”
and perhaps she tripled the saying
when the runes said truly, it would not be a boy.
Queens may be made by their beauty, but they stay queens
by ruthlessly plotting, by subtle insidious invention,
by the endless perfection of nuance,
by webs within webs within webs,
and who would know better the danger,
the fear of the sudden betrayal
the source of her power made certain,
than one who had suffered it herself,
so she cried with a voice hoarse with screaming,
“Hecate, goddess of witches, Hecate mother of queens,
let her skin be as snow in the morning,
and her hair like the wing of the raven,
let her lips be as red as the fire
and her beauty the mirror of mine!”
But perhaps the curse was more subtle
than anything men can imagine
and Snow White was only the method
to blight all the days with dark envy
of the king’s next young beautiful queen.

©WILLIAM JOHN WATKINS