The Ballad of Angrboða

Your woods were quiet
when you saw him:
A fire god, slightly singed.
(Let’s not put this out yet.
Let’s nurse it a little longer.
Come here and help me.)
You could have bolted.
He would have let you.
But he stood smiling
and you came shyly to his
outstretched hand.
Loki knows something you don’t know, Angrboða.
Look at those eyes.
Only ancient eyes can laugh like that.
He will laugh at you, Hag of the Iron Wood,
for the thousand ways you are laughable,
even as he fills you.
He will laugh with his bright wolf voice
He will laugh with his eyes like the sharp full moon through still water
that is not as shallow as you think it is
He will laugh with his hands on you,
so sweet you could cry
He will laugh like a well-played instrument
And you will stand among the redwood sounds
and feel the comfort of their bower.
He laughs because he sees you.
He’s not as you expected him
But you were born Angrboða,
darling,
and the story was already written.
He will burn your body to ash,
then gather you back into his arms
and burn you again
and again
and again
and the oceans he melts from you
will carry you to new lands.
You will bear ideas together —
beautiful
terrible
powerful
ideas.
and you will raise them as your own.
And though he will find his Sigyn
(for that is written, too)
that day is many pages hence.
Now,
spread yourself beneath him
like a meadow of fragrant flowers
like a book waiting for a pen
like the goodbad witch he loves to love
and show him your softest places
and invite him to your deepest depths.
And when they say
“I don’t know about that Loki —
I’ve heard he’s a trickster
and so he must be wicked.”
You will laugh
because you have seen him.