Front Porch Review
A literary magazine for the young at heart and mind

“that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude”
Wordsworth, “The Daffodils”

Like a cascade of silken water,
my hair falls over the pool
of the dressing table mirror.
I search my own face,
wondering what I’d hoped to find.
Into the green thicket of the past,
I slip inside a fairy tale.
How my grandmother
pointed to the dying light
twinkling in the trees,
showing me the fairies
I believed in because I wanted to.

The first witch was my mother,
sowing dissension, hiding deceit,
plotting ways to set her children
against each other.
It was more than a game,
it was a compulsion.
We four sisters and a brother
consumed her poisoned love.
Every year she grew thinner,
teetering on high heels,
flapping her wings like a crow,
her back curved like a question mark.
Her life force fed a fire of trash ─
igniting conflicts
passed down to children
like religious obligations.
I shriveled up and dug in,
a hard seed of resistance.
I never could relax my guard ─
when I tried, I came to grief ─
better not to be noticed,
best of all to leave.

I used to dream of the world
at the back of a mirror,
as if I could step into it, another Alice,
and the glass would part to take me in,
like dry water. There would be
an interior like a Dutch painting,
the light falling in one direction,
a woman sitting quietly, waiting.
She would look up and nod
when I passed, and let me go.

By Anne Whitehouse

Anne Whitehouse, poet, fiction writer, journalist, and critic is the author of poetry collections entitled The Surveyor's Hand, Blessings and Curses, and Bear in Mind; One Sunday Morning is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Her novel Fall Love is available as a free e-book from Smashwords and Feedbooks, and is its own app on the iTunes store. Her second novel, Rosalind's Ring, set in her native Birmingham, was a finalist in the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards and is seeking a publisher. Formerly a teacher and college professor, Anne has worked in the not-for-profit world for over twenty years. Please visit her website, www.annewhitehouse.com, for links to her published works, interviews, and bibliographies. Her e-mail address: Anne Whitehouse