The knight rides errant, the beautiful knight in the shadow of his hair. He is young, his body skimmed milk poured into armor. He will find the Grail. The forest opens about him, rustle rustle, bristling like a topiary maze.
Pure in heart. We would like to become the Knight of the Grail, to speak the timeless language graven on his shield. A cross, a lion. Eagle wings. The show Knight Rider, it turns out, is only about a car—a talking car, but still, how disappointing! We watch the show anyway, clamping our teeth on the last of the word knight. We’re wrapped in quilts. A camel bell hangs on the wall. We inhabit a speaking world until we go to school, where they ask “Are you black or white?” and we realize that our shields are blank.
The knight falls in love with a fairy queen. He sleeps for a hundred years.
When he wakes up, look! He has become his feathered self.
The forest rings with his brassy cries. And the fairy queen mounts her horse and rides off, tugged by strings we maneuver with Popsicle sticks.
© 2018 by Sofia Samatar & Del Samatar
