Her Mother Confesses

Your well-meaning father rid the kingdom
of all the spindles, the wheels, the needles
that witch said would kill you. But I, guilty,
in a little room, a closet really, hid one,
a spinning wheel, with flax half wound,
spindle atop, my aching heart’s axis.
I’d sneak away. I’d spin. The hum of it
soothed my wretched soul, the fragile thread
led me from one long day through the next.
I could feel the speed on my fingertips
hours after returning to my duties, flax dust
under my nails. Forgive me, my lost darling.
All those years spent spinning in this room
on an instrument meant to be your doom.