Trigger Warning

The witch was as old as the mulberry tree

She lived in the house of a hundred clocks

She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea

And she kept her life in a box.

The tree was the oldest that I’d ever seen

Its trunk flowed like liquid. It dripped with age.

But every September its fruit stained the green

As scarlet as harlots, as red as my rage.

The clocks whispered time which they caught in their gears

They crept and they chattered, they chimed and they chewed.

She fed them on minutes. The old ones ate years.

She feared and she loved them, her wild clocky brood.

She sold me a storm when my anger was strong

And my hate filled the world with volcanoes and laughter

I watched as the lightnings and wind sang their song

And my madness was swallowed by what happened after.

She sold me three sorrows all wrapped in a cloth.

The first one I gave to my enemy’s child.

The second my woman made into a broth.

The third waits unused, for we reconciled.

She sold calm seas to the mariners’ wives

Bound the winds with silk cords so the storms could be tied there,

The women at home lived much happier lives

Till their husbands returned, and their patience be tried there.

The witch hid her life in a box made of dirt,

As big as a fist and as dark as a heart

There was nothing but time there and silence and hurt

While the witch watched the waves with her pain and her art.

(But he never came back. He never came back . . .)

The witch was as old as the mulberry tree

She lived in the house of a hundred clocks

She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea

And she kept her life in a box.