Woman in Blue Combing Her Hair // Snegurochka

Poetry by Kailee Marie Pedersen

Woman in Blue Combing Her Hair

— after Hashiguchi Goyō
— for Spencer

I said I would pose for you
clothed in dragonfly blue, white flowers,
feasting on sunlight until the late afternoon.
Things are always the same no matter
who does the marrying. My mother
bought me this comb and said I must
bury it after I married. She had a superstition
that children would sprout from its teeth
but they only broke off in my hair. Which you
helped me wash, in the springtime
your hands slender with youth. You pressed
it to your mouth, and I turned my eyes away
wanting not to be seen. Were the others
like me? Did you marry them
as we did? Too young, our bodies aching and
full of soil. I float now. Perch myself
at the edge of your bath, my bare legs
brushing your shoulders. Once you took
my small foot in your hand. I was
naked for you, but I did not love you,
not like the pink yukata you bought me
or the boy I knew for a single summer
and never touched. Time crests over me
white as seafoam. I am made of the same ash
as your mother and sister. You paint
so well, my husband. You mark your years
with ink. If only we had spent more time
lying in bed together. You have made me
young again in your pictures, and your wives
look upon me with envious smiles. “This
is her?” they ask, plucking at their sleeves.
You say, “My first wife.” Soon these women
will push their knives into me, as they did
on my deathbed. They will throw fits, and scream,
“She is always staring at me! She never
turns away!” You will hide me from them,
and in secret you will touch my face once more,
and it is only then, just then,
I will turn my face away.

Snegurochka

— for Tim

When you disappeared we took the reindeer out and looked for you. We crashed ourselves against the icicles, and the frozen lakes made our hounds turn back. There was one woman among us who had her own sleigh; she thought you might have drowned, and come first thaw your body would rise up to the surface, opening itself to the sky like a bright bloom. We went into the city for the first time since the autumn, and no one had seen you, and still your mother swore that you had been with her at the market and when you returned home you had chased snowflakes, ran after the dogs, shouting with loud, whimpering child-cries. Your brothers were too young to understand when we asked them if you had been taken; they said you had gone away to the place where the treetops blocked the sky and the loam was solid beneath our feet. So we went, and found only a circle of mushrooms, stubborn, their pointed heads viewing us with mild curiosity. We took our axes and cut down trees and called your name. There were only deer in the forest; we killed one in a hunt and took its antlers as a trophy. We gave it to your mother as an apology. We stopped looking when the snow stopped falling, and in the spring the woman with the sleigh paid Erick money because she was wrong and you were not there. The lakes held nothing but water and fish that leapt gleefully into our nets, their mouths gasping in the sand. Your mother had a new baby; your father came with us to cut branches. In time we found bones, small ones that fit into our palms, but they were the bones of deer children, of fawns. One of us, though we never knew until he died, would sleep outside of his house, in the woods. There was a place by a stream where he had buried you, amongst the clovers. When he soothed his horses, we saw that his hands were tender as a young girl’s. After a flood cast away the earth, we found you, skull and wrist joints. Your femur. He was long dead by then. We left you as you were, asleep. Now we set out food for you in the winter and warn our children about the snow maiden who lives in the woods. We will forget you, someday. Your little ribcage, broken on one side. The tenderness of his hands as you ran from him. The wind, howling back at the dogs.

Kailee Marie Pedersen is a soon-to-be graduate of Columbia University majoring in Classics. Her essays and poetry have appeared in Strange Horizons, Identity Theory, TRACK//FOUR, and The Boiler Journal. She is currently in the process of writing an essay collection. Her hobbies include video games and opera singing. She was adopted from Nanning in 1996 and currently resides in South Carolina and New York City.