"Rusalka" by Jenny Irish

Jenny Irish is the author of the hybrid poetry collections Common Ancestor (Black Lawrence Press, 2017) and Tooth Box (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022), the short story collection I Am Faithful (Black Lawrence Press, 2019), and the forthcoming chapbooks Hatch (Ethel, 2022) and Lupine (Black Lawrence, 2023). She teaches creative writing at Arizona State University and facilitates free community workshops every summer.

---

Rusalka
 
No dreams. No buttercream. No nesting bowls. No sugar beaten into shape. No doe and fawn in
the wildflower field. No toast crisp and cut to soldiers. No soft-boiled egg. No eggcup. No little
throne for a beheading. Mouse tracks through the flour. A hole burrowed through the bread. No
eat your fill. No second helpings. Before birth, I was the rough work, good enough. A daughter, I
became the failed spell cast with petals and a candle flame. Crinoline, velvet ribbons. My child-
mother’s father picked a name. No magic in our meeting. No songbirds. No rare light. A tall girl,
legs limp from kicking. A wet infant with a greenish slick of hair. No two fingers touched to the
forehead. No two fingers touched to test the temperature of the baby’s bath. Everything pink,
until a finger’s snap switches it to black. No lullabies. Farmland plowed and harrowed. No girl
left fallow. Take me to the river. Show me where the deadfall caught the body. No more pretty,
​pretty. No more use for an ivory comb. No more haunted wanting. Girlie, at last, left alone.