House Wren
“What women wander?“
-“Among Women,” Marie Ponsot
You marry the ogre and become a bird. Your name is Jenny; he calls you Wife. When he’d courted you, you’d been a human girl, bright hair a flag. The bird you become is small and grey- brown. He gifts you with plumage, a pendant on a thick gold chain, jingling bracelets for your twig arms and legs. As a girl you loved to sing, but your bird voice is chitter and cheep, the shift and tumble of small stones, so he carves a lyre to be as a voice for you. He is an earthy man; food, sleep, drink, sex. He is kind; he speaks softly; he has a gentle touch. You flutter. Your down you give to feather his nest. He provides a place, light, warm and safe. You brew bone beer, bake bone bread. How he’d got the bones you don’t seek to know. You bear him two children, daughter and son. Your girl is an ogre, but your son is born a bird. He sings like a nightingale. Your daughter plays the bones. After a while you know or learn or teach yourself to weave. You weave between chores, in vestibules and unused rooms, in stolen moments: baskets and carpets, shawls and stockings and caps you weave from air, from nothing, like magic. And you unfurl, you fly, even soar, but always circle, home. You grow accustomed to the safety and pleasures of the nest, the warm body next. Like the birds who perch on animals and ingest biting insects, you live on his back. You live in the clouds above their heads.
Marjorie Tesser (she/her) writes poetry and fiction. Recent work has appeared in Molecule, Cutleaf, Drunk Monkeys, and others. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Magic Feather (FLP) and THE IMPORTANT THING IS (Firewheel Chapbook Award Winner), and is the editor of Mom Egg Review, a literary magazine on mothers and motherhood.
The Marbled Sigh 