Girl in the Doorway by Dorianne Laux Listen Online
She is twelve now, the door to her room closed, telephone cord trailing the hallway in tight curls. I stand at the dryer, listening through the thin wall between us, her voice rising and falling as she describes her new life. Static flies in brief blue stars from her socks, her hairbrush in the morning. Her silver braces shine inside the velvet case of her mouth. Her grades rise and fall, her friends call or they don’t, her dog chews her new shoes to a canvas pulp. Some days she opens her door and musk rises from the long crease in her bed, fills the dim hall. She grabs a denim coat and drags the floor. Dust swirls in gold eddies behind her. She walks through the house, a goddess, each window pulsing with summer. Outside, the boys wait for her teeth to straighten. They have a vibrant patience. When she steps onto the front porch, sun shimmies through the tips of her hair, the V of her legs, fans out like wings under her arms as she raises them and waves. Goodbye, Goodbye. Then she turns to go, folds up all that light in her arms like a blanket and takes it with her. "Girl in the Doorway" by Dorianne Laux from Awake. Eastern Washington University Press, 2007. Reprinted by permission. (buy now) |
On this date in 1536,Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England's King Henry VIII, was arrestedfor high treason, adultery, and incest. She was intelligent and outspoken, and had educated opinions about politics and religious reform and came to the court of Henry VIII when she was 20 years old, to serve as lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon. She soon caught the eye of the king. For seven years he wooed her, and for seven years she put him off. He managed to get his first marriage annulled by breaking with the pope and declaring himself head of the Church of England and then Anne Boleyn consented to marry him. Their early months of marriage were happy ones, and their first child, Elizabeth, was born in 1533. Anne had several miscarriages after that, and she never gave Henry the son he so desperately wanted, so he accused her of every capital offense he could think of: numerous affairs, incest with her brother, plotting his murder, and witchcraft. She was convicted, and sentenced to death. The only mercy he showed her was in ordering that she be beheaded by a sword, rather than a common axe. In her last letter to the King on May 6, 1536, Anne Boleyn wrote: "Your Grace's displeasure, and my Imprisonment are Things so strange unto me, as what to Write, or what to Excuse, I am altogether ignorant [...]never a Prince had a Wife more Loyal in all Duty, and in all true Affection, than you have found in Anne Boleyn [...] But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my Death, but an Infamous Slander must bring you the enjoying of your desired Happiness; then I desire of God, that he will pardon your great Sin therein, and likewise mine Enemies, the Instruments thereof; that he will not call you to a strict Account for your unprincely and cruel usage of me, at his General Judgment-Seat, where both you and my self must shortly appear, and in whose Judgment, I doubt not, (whatsover the World may think of me) mine Innocence shall be openly known, and sufficiently cleared." |