Sometimes you have to let someone cut off your hands.
You have to plant aloe fingertips in the backyard & pick
apples from the orchard with your voice. Let the beautybush
& the bee-balm take turns hurting you. It has always

been this way. When your father agrees to sell you
to a rich prince, the world will say, He is providing for you.
When that prince turns out to be the Devil,
the world will say, You were asking for it. What can you do?

Drink yarrow tea, trim your chokeberry & cigar
flowers & wait. Sing songs to the feather-reed grasses
your feet play hide & seek in. Plant zinnia crowns
on your head. When the Devil says, Cut off her hands,

your father cuts. They will say, He was at war
within himself. They will try to say, It was grief. You know
the truth; the Devil is inside. So you will run from the Devil,
run all the way to another rich man’s garden,

a king, a different kind of evil. & you will pluck
his pears to soothe your stomach. & he will sentence you to
a kind of death – to become his queen – for your trespasses.
He will buy you silver hands, as if he can’t stand

the absence, as if he sees an absence & must fill it.
You will bear his child. He will believe it a changeling
& order you executed. They will blame it on the Devil.
The queen-mother will cut out a deer’s heart & pretend

it is yours. You, a castoff queen, will live in the forest
for seven years. Until some god gives you real flesh &
blood hands. Until the king changes his mind.
Until you don’t live happily ever after.