The Garland They Did Not Weave

by Mairwen

I have stood at the edge of the dancing and I know what edges cost,

where the Midsommar fire burns its brightest and the peripheral are lost,

where they weave their crowns from meadowsweet, from yarrow, rue, and bloom…

and every hand finds someone… and I am given room.

Only room. Only room. And the birchwood knew my name.

I have watched the circle tighten like a knot around a flame,

watched the bold ones find each other with an easy, wordless claim,

watched the garland pass from hand to hand, watched every head be crowned…

and I have memorized the silence of the one who is not found.

Not yet found. Not yet found. And the crow watched just the same.

There is a grief that needs no grave, that carves no stone, no date,

it lives inside the laughter heard through someone else's gate,

in the name they did not call, the glance that moved across the green

and found the space behind me… I was there, and yet unseen.

I was there. I was there. And the rowan held its frame.

Oh, but I have pressed my palms to bark till something old replied,

I have read the runes by ember-light with Spirits at my side,

I have given word to valley-stone, to fen-root, field, and rill…

they never stopped their knowing… and they know me ever still.

They know me. They know me. By a deeper, older claim.

For I am still the woman who ran barefoot through the grain,

who pressed her mouth to thunderheads and swallowed all the rain,

who carried grief like kindling through the long and lightless years

and came out the far side burning… and is burning even here.

Still burning. Still burning. With no one left to blame.

They see the body's season, see the years the mirror shows,

they see what time has written without asking what one knows…

they do not see the woman who has sat beside the dead,

who earned what she is carrying through everything she bled.

Everything she bled. Everything she bled. And she carried it the same.

And I’ll not dress it finely… there is plainness in the ache

of being the last considered, or forgotten in the wake,

of standing at the margin while the chosen are embraced,

of turning toward the darkness at the edges of that place.

That dark place. That dark place. And it always felt the same.

I wanted to be called for. I wanted to be seen

as something more than background, more than the space between,

I wanted one hand reaching in the choosing and the light…

instead I learned what edges cost when you're standing in plain sight.

In plain sight. In plain sight. And it cut me just the same.

Yet what the Norns have threaded holds through darkness and through light,

and the birch tree counts its winters through the longest, coldest night,

and the crow has watched since long before the dancers claimed the green…

he knows what endures the season and what edges truly mean.

What they mean. What they mean. To the patient and unseen.

The fire will fall to ember and the dancing will go still,

and I will walk the long way home, as I always will,

past the rowan, past the birch, past the crow gone dark and still,

past the cedar old as sorrow on the long and moonlit hill…

and the stars will watch my going as they've watched since time began…

and I was loved by starlight, and by nothing, and by land.

Written at the field's edge... in the light that would not end.