The Goblin Queene lets me hit
She stopped—mid-prance—mid-royal spree,
As if a thought had tugged her sleeve,
And turned her star-door face to me
With that bright look that won’t deceive.
The pups went statue-still behind,
Their tongues like little pennants hung;
The air went syrup-thick, and kind,
And something in my marrow sung.
“Okay,” she said, as if to pause
A coronation for a clause,
And made a circle with her thumb—
A small, precise, instructive sum.
“Listen, dude. I could—” (and here
Her grin went knife, went chandelier)
“—do the whole thing. Hounds and horns.
Make you forget you’ve ever worn
A name. Make you a myth I keep
In amber, just for when I sleep.”
Her fingers hovered—did not land—
A comet held above my hair,
And all the wanting in her hand
Was obvious as fire in air.
Then, gentle as a lock turned twice,
She lowered voice, she lowered pace:
“But I don’t do that. Not like that.
Not if you’re not all in for it.
You get to say. You get to steer.
You get to stop. You get to clear.”
And God—how that made hunger bloom,
How safety turned the dial to loud,
How it made bright the misted room
And drew a halo from a cloud.
My throat went tight with grateful fear,
The good kind—sudden, clean, and near.
“I want you,” I confessed. “I want—
The pageant, and the honest part.
I want the way you make me haunt
My own small body like a heart
That’s finally learned to take up space.
I want your teeth without the chase.”
She laughed—one bark of autumn mirth—
Then softened, like a leaf’s slow fall.
“Okay,” she said, “then here’s the earth:
Answer me true. Answer me all.”
She pointed, bright, imperious, sly—
Not at my mouth, but at my eyes.
“Right now. In this exact degree:
Do you want touch? And where? And please
Don’t dress it up for poetry.
No saint-card bullshit. Plain with me.”
So I was plain. I said: “My hair.
My arm. My chest. Not my throat.”
And when I named those places there,
She nodded, like a careful note
Made in the margin of a tome:
A promise written into home.
“Good,” said the Queen, and then her palm—
At last—came down, and set me warm,
Not pouncing, no; a steady psalm,
A hand that held instead of swarmed.
The power didn’t lessen—no—
It simply took a truer form:
A bonfire taught to burn in snow.
A hurricane that chose a shore.
She watched my breath, she watched my face,
Like reading weather for a change.
“Still good?” she asked, and held the space
Where “no” could live without feeling strange.
And when I whispered, “Yes—keep going,”
Her smile went feral, bright, and knowing.
“Say stop,” she said, “and I’m a wall.
Say slower, and I’m slow. Say more,
And I will make the whole hedge hall
Become a throat, become a door—
But you’re the one that turns the key.
Got it? Consent is royalty.”
I nodded, shaking. Half a prayer.
Half lust. Half laughter at my state.
She kissed the air beside my ear
Like testing heat, like tasting fate,
Then pulled back, eyes like polished stone,
And said, with tenderness alone:
“You wrote me huge,” she teased. “You did.
Ten million titles. Cute as hell.
But don’t forget—beneath the lid,
I’m also Justine. I can tell
When you’re about to drift away
And daydream yourself into day.”
She tapped my forehead. “Stay with me.
Stay here. The magic’s not the trance.
It’s choosing, babe. It’s agency.
It’s both of us, not circumstance.”
Then—like your hinge—she snapped the spell
Back into market-day and smell
Of dirt and apples, sharp and sweet,
And marched off laughing down the street:
“Also: those deer. I swear to God.
Next time they come and play that fraud
At my damn weir, I’ll make it grim—
I’ll trim ‘em like a hymn with shears.
Come on, dude. Walk me. Bring your fears.
I’ll teach you which ones aren’t for them.”