For Glut, from Her First Husband
by Elizabeth Vongvisith
You were
the beginning for me—
not the first to be taken
or to take, but my first love;
youth and inexperience
twinned with passion
formed, as it fell out later,
from the wiles of another
whose face was already
branded into my heart.
But while I still could,
I dressed you in soft skins,
colored the air around you
with magic and turned you ripe
and full with night’s animal love;
your laughing daughters with hair
as brilliant scarlet in the sunlight
as your own,
as hers.
I knew I was not doing right,
and you seemed sadder, but even
in my wane and disinterest,
I saw there were better things—
a harvest of mighty trees,
delicate green leaves,
and another man bold enough
to take to wife the first love
of a firebrand whose heart
was pledged elsewhere.
And I knew too that they,
our lovely girls, they would be
better kept under your sheltering arm
than thrown into my wyrd to drown
as nearly all the others have.
So, my earliest hearth-friend,
I have no regrets, and I know
you will forever brighten and adorn
the wood of our kinsfolk
with your clear eyes and hair
like the fiery glow of sunset,
fire, embers and blood.
Artwork by Kendall.