Editor’s Note: This poem is part of Strange Horizons’ twentieth anniversary special issue. Strange Horizons published two or three of Sonya Taaffe's poems each year from 2007 through 2010. In 2011, Sonya became poetry editor of Strange Horizons, and continued in that role through 2018, at one time comprising the entire department.

for Lila Garrott

Come, my beloved, still so shy,
so many husbands consigned to your embrace
like onions headfirst to the ground,
no wonder you wrapped yourself in your father’s forgetfulness
and fled the world, hunting for the bitter drop.
Lead me out, the groom among the gravestones
that crowd this blackest of weddings
like beggars to the dance.
The demon-king himself would have raised you temples,
but mine was the mouth you drank from, a cup of pearls.
Let the names we buried keep your father looking
too late to bless us
beneath the canopy of his suffocating wings.