by Carrie Kim

art by Emma Eisler

This is an ages-old  tale about a Fairy and a Woodcutter

The chances are that you have heard it many, many times already

You must know how the story goes, a kind woodcutter saving a talking deer

And becoming privy to a never-told secret about beautiful women who take a dip come nightfall

He finds her broken and becomes her salvation, offering her a home, a palace of duty

She bears him a child, or maybe there were two, but the story goes that she’s a slick-mouthed liar

A thief, a user, leaving him with all her kids 

A cunning manipulator, an ungrateful wife, running away with her glistening silk dress

Or maybe it wasn’t a dress, it was her whole skin too

She carefully peeled it, folded it and kissed it under a rock

Her name is Fairy or Selkie, a monster, a girl child

She roams the high mountains, between pages of your children’s book

But what you never knew was that she never needed a palace of wood

She could already take flight and the whole ocean was hers, too

No fall, no drowning, no servitude under violent eyes

She doesn’t read love to be abduction and wonders why all these storytellers do 

So the next time you pull out this card, don’t believe the woodcutter, dear reader

For they know nothing about being free, only about wooden homes and bodies in constant reach

Drown, die, with your children or without your children

But never believe the woodcutter, the woodcutter always lies