Fox

It doesn’t matter how long she’s hidden
or what name is given to the stone
by the spirit living within,
and the prince’s wounds healed—
she served three emperors this way
and each time the kingdom forgot.

Her voice clouds the night air
like splinters of glass
but he doesn’t turn his back.
Each word pierces his face,
draws water from under his fingernails.

He suffers every fragment
because he knows—
he was there when the clouds boiled
from stillness into fury;
he saw candles sputter and die.

He knows it was not the lightning,
It was her—it was
ten thousand chrysanthemums
shattered by the hot spring wind
that stirred in her skin,
and it was the sun in her heart,
the moon in her face.

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