Rose Red

by Cory-Ellen Nadel

Tiny, pale and proud in pearly gown,

Rose White stands hand in paw with bear-prince.

There is a hint of flush high in her cheeks,

but palest ivory is the theme of the day.

This is a double wedding.

Rose Red marries the prince's brother.

They are hidden off to one side, behind a curtain. After all,

the focus must be on bear and bride,

no one should have to remember

the ill-fated count and his chunky new wife.

You see, not all the bewitched become noble bears.

There are those whose transformation

is merely revelation

of the beastly hearts they always bore within.

Rose Red's hand is caught

in the talons of her groom.

Long past the age when he should have been wed,

growling through the ceremony

until the nervous priest must shout to make himself heard,

he clutches Red's poor hand so tight

the blood drips down her palm.

She bitterly envisions

children. Her silken sister

will have large, healthy babies,

perhaps a little furrier than most, but

loving and warm.

Her own offspring will rip their way through her belly,

screaming not for milk

but blood and bone. She closes her eyes

dry and tight against the looming future,

as the priest pronounces them

wolverine and wife.

The ring is barbed.

He kisses the bride.

Bites off her tongue.

Close the book here.

Call this a fairy tale, and exclaim

over the gruesome fancy

of seventeenth-century folklorists.

But I tell you now

this story exists not only in tattered pages

of Grimm's. I have heard it

in irregular pulse-beat and harsh breathing

of women in the back of an ambulance. I have felt it

in swelling bellies below fractured ribs. I can read it

in bruised paper-skin as I slip in

an IV.

Any medic will tell you:

in these women, it is

always hard

to find the vein.