Belladonna Lilies

The forest edge blushes with them,

supposedly tricky but spreading 

without my help. They lift their pink fingers

even in the shade. Reaching for what?

Called “naked ladies” for their leafless stems 

that could be fake—flowers for the stage 

or plucked from a child’s book. 

They invite me out in the half-light. 

See how the yard once extended farther—

there, a forgotten woodpile, a trellis fragment.

Slowly, the forest crept forward

and embraced the ladies. 

Summers, they return. But it is not safe 

to trust their beckoning: 

laced with poison ivy and toxic, 

they make no easy path for me. 

Still, how like wrists they are—look—

birthing curled and curving hands.

Anyone would walk toward them,

anyone would stretch out a fingertip.

When does the fairytale hook

its quiet claws into you?

And anyway, something uncanny 

about that lily smoothness, as if this house

is not mine at all. It has been replaced

with a strange twin. And these lilies

are an artist’s mistake that gives

the ruse away. I content myself. I watch. 

The forest thickens and twists.

AZA PACE is the author of the poetry collection Her Terrible Splendor, which won the Emma Howell Rising Poet Prize from Willow Springs Books. Read more.

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