Briar Rose

after a tale by the Brothers Grimm

This is the way the world should be.

Beautiful daughters do not die.

Instead, the universe stops with her breath,

which becomes the timer for everything else,

so that, when a miracle undoes her death,

all of us—every father, every friend,

every fly on the wall, every budding leaf—

awaken to gather round her, to laugh

with joy that she is here and so are we.