by Amanda McLeod
Snow Queen Dream
1.
I walk to the center of the frozen lake. I turn around and can’t tell what part of the shore I came from. The land looks featureless. Trees in a sawtooth pattern against a fuzzy gray mist and a sky that will go dark soon. No footprints to follow, I go in what seems a logical direction, hoping the ice holds. What once felt solid now gives way with each step. The slushy ice greases my footing.
2.
Serrated trees small and distant as a line of poetry. The ice milkwhite as the milkwhite sky. I hear the echoey booms of shifting. There’s no one else. No house flickers in the mist. How can I dream of a place I’ve never been unless I’m there? I know what it is to be lost—to have gone too far in. Maybe we each go to our own frozen lake when we die. Weighed down by our coats meant to keep us warm. The inkling of survival lies behind the cloud-masked stars, but we fall through. The freezing water anchors our boots. Our pockets fill with sleeping fish.
3.
Snow Queen, your snow bees look so intricate. Big as hens until they start melting. I’ve been stuck out on this lake you call The Mirror of Reason and try and try to put together the shards into the word you want. I can’t. Your fat bees keep falling in my eyes. The Devil has stabbed my eye with his shattered mirror. Surely ugliness can’t be everywhere, but it is all I can see. The ice threatens to collapse under me and I hurry to solve the puzzle of the word “eternity.” I am blue with the cold. My fingers are turning black. Your kiss has numbed my heart. Who will save me but myself? No friend. No favorite red shoes to be seen. I want my own skates so I can glide wherever I choose. My own tears wash out the chip of glass until the long captivity is over.
Jessica Purdy holds an MFA from Emerson College. She is the author of STARLAND and Sleep in a Strange House (Nixes Mate, 2017 and 2018), The Adorable Knife (Grey Book Press, 2023), and You’re Never the Same (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023). The Adorable Knife won the NH Literary Award’s People’s Choice Award. Sleep in a Strange House was a finalist for the NH Literary Award for poetry. Her poems and micro-fiction have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Best Micro-Fiction. Her poetry, flash fiction, and reviews appear in FERAL, Action, Spectacle, Luna Luna, About Place, On the Seawall, Radar, The Night Heron Barks, SoFloPoJo, Litro, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Exeter, New Hampshire. Facebook and Instagram: jessica.purdy.735
Amanda McLeod writes and makes art in Canberra, Australia. She’s about to enter a season of wintering, smack in the middle of summer. Find her on socials and Substack @AmandaMWrites.