Jennifer Crow: Fallen to Witches

The world catches its breath after harvest, ghosts of leaves drifting across the fields into heaps of tarnished gold, and the hunters ride out, shouts like weapons echoing sharp from the hills. How long I wait, cool evenings shivering against my skin, dreams curdling like milk left too long in the barn. Yet still you run like the great stags of the forest, long-legged and wild, a rust-brown shadow moving through stony creek beds and up the long, pine-studded slopes. The rest of our people whisper shame in my wake, how I drove you out, how my love bewitched you and left you less a man than before. But I never cast curse or blessing until you fled, never cut and bled, never ground roots between my teeth, or drew Bible verses backward on the floor of the cellar, until you abandoned our dreams. And then no price seemed too steep to pay, for your hand landing gently in mine, your gaze deep as autumn night and steady as the ice on a winter pond. I have fallen to witches, sworn my soul to something hungrier than my heart, and all for you, who have never looked back, clad in wild skins and regrets.

Read by Diane Severson.