Ellen Forder
CHRYSALIS
Wrapping myself in silken threads,
I slowly evolved.
Cocooned.
You waited, sheltering me from high winds
and pelting rains.
As I emerged, you sat sentinel,
ever curious to see the world around you.
Finally I was free from my casing-
you smiled to see my wings and hues.
Delicate yet transformed.
Only, you saw no change.
In your mind I had always been complete.
It was I that needed to see the true me.
ELEANOR
Born to lead, but held in the world of men.
The power I gained in my youth was immeasurable. What a trophy I became.
A golden placed on my head and the two-fold swellings of my temple gained me no love, only disappointment.
How dare he blame me? The marks of a weak man to gaze at grace and power and see only fault.
He was not the first sovereign to think this way.
Appointed by God? Abandoned by their deities when it really mattered because they could not face their own truth.
A failed Crusade.
Tensions mounted and I was held on a pedestal of fault,
set there by the men who created the pillars of strength, ambition and greed,
only to see them flake away as others let their wrath rain down.
Abandoned. I was threatened but took command.
I would choose my own path in life, no man would manage my strings.
I made them into my own ribbons of silk and wound them tightly into cocoons of greatness.
Five peacocks and three painted ladies.
I held an empire together. My ribbons turning to rope and net. Holding all within.
Then another crack. Torn between two factions. A mother will always protect her young.
Old Sarum day and night.
Weeks into years without the airy dawn.
No blissful sunset.
Only eternal twilight.
But even in the night’s black cloak, shimmering stars are woven.
A glimmer and glisten to remind you of your strength, your purpose and your worth.
Like a sailor’s guide, I used them to wend my way back onto the causeway.
I would never flounder in the shallows.
The marshes would not take me under.
The tides were behind me, never against me.
Selene would hear me in the darkness and sliver would mark my way.
My lionheart opened the lock and then marched away into the unknown.
I would save him, of course.
A mother always will.
I worked my magic,
pulling threads- weaving a blanket of power and grace across the green pastures.
In the dusk I went home, to Aquitaine.
My home embraced me and my soul lingers on long after my dust has settled.
It was always me. It was all me.
I was everything and they loved me and loathed me in equal measure.
Such was the lot of a powerful woman.
Blessed and cursed.
My very core was of the strongest power you might imagine
and no man could ever wield
me.
Written by: Ellen Forder