A Marsh Queen Cloaked in Red
She does not strut.
She slides.
Low and lean through fetid pools and reed-choked mud,
yellow eyes catching starlight,
shadows breaking, bending, gone.
Call her Vixen,
but do not get her wrong.
She is no bedtime tale.
She is the quiet inside noise,
a flicker between blinks,
a vole’s splash,
the reeds’ quick shiver before the wind hits.
Born in thorns, dipped in rust.
Red is her warning.
Slip-clay banks bleeding after rain,
signs she reads
long before you knew
you should stop.
She does not need our roads,
our fences, our watching eyes.
She moves where rules rot.
In the marsh she reigns, then vanishes.
Every pigeon feather leaving a question.
Every track already filling with mud.
You think you saw her?
You saw what she allowed.
Or perhaps
nothing at all.
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