On your sixteenth birthday,
your childhood expires
behind a spinning wheel.
In one version, it’s like this:
Trapped by domesticity,
you fall into a coma because
being a woman in your time
is slightly better than being dead.
Or take a different analysis:
Not even the king and queen
and all accursed instruments
burned in endless pyres
anticipating your disaster
could keep two parents
from losing control.
But I heard a third version,
told by a shadowy figure
smelling faintly of ether,
who pulled me aside and
showed me the wonders of
mysterious vials. Look, he said,
this is what we gave her.
A prick of propofol,
A snuff of sevoflurane to tide
her over, to when the world
is a century wiser. Tell me
that’s not preferable to ruling
a paranoid kingdom. Besides,
something in her was broken,
and now, we think, it’s fixed.
