Scheherazade
How can this compare with what I shall tell you this coming night, if I am still alive and the king spares me? – One Thousand and One Nights
Scheherazade must stop the light from
entering. Her face: not blood but cut ruby.
Her smile: a string of pearls. Tonight she
resembles my mother. So like a girl’s
apartment is her royal chamber, the king like a
stranger breaking in. Tell me a story, he says,
Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you. Shadows of
chairs become foreshadowing and the door a
frame to frame the tale. Narrative is her neck
encircled by his hands. Of proverbs, she has
none. Of flowers: the bruised rose, the
crushed anemone. Of the king with his
fingers on her collarbone, she has this to say:
that silk may be used for strangling, that a girl
may stab to the silver hilt.