by Kaylor Jones
Scheherazade
A wife is impure and dies.
A wife is pure or she dies.
The wives are pure. They still die.
A wife is in the chamber of a king. They call her
the pearl of Persia because she is very crushable.
The stars hold their breath. Tomorrow
wavers like an unbound tapestry.
The wife unravels the killing
ribbons. She hushes the stars.
They know she has been in
the slammer since she became a wife.
She weaves the ribbons into lace around
the rib cage of the king. The knot finds his heart.
Tomorrow is a thread unspooling.
Kaylor Jones is a freelance writer from Mesa, Arizona. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in What Are Birds?, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Ghost City Review, and elsewhere.