Nine Poems for Girls Who Won't Read Them

For Annika

you chose to be an unknowable

glimpsed every now and then

like a deer seen through mist or

the dense, unforgiving forrest of a Russian fairytale

and you let us love you from afar

a vision of icy perfection that melted

the closer we drew

For you had suffered once for love

and were not keen to suffer again

And who could blame you?

We crept closer

the mist began to clear

And then she came, and you fled

back into a forest of

your own planting

once more unknowable

and perhaps forever