for Anita, my mother

The fairy tale wrote itself from a dream,
you said, and your illustrations bloomed
to the cover: my middle name,
Anders, in tall letters circled with gold.

Above the mountains, three Norns
sat quietly, spinning the lifelines
that guide our journey. One night, a storm
swept the peeks, whirl winded their twine

into hard knots: a child born backwards
in manners, stuttering, though he sang
his youth with the forest's birds--
tanagers, parakeets, toucans.

Coming home one day, he saw black wings
and a huge beak pulling the line's end,
took hold of the last knot, and, flying
now, soared over houses, an ocean.

They glided to an island called Wish
where he met a king and his daughter
who had chestnut colored skin. The princess
untangled the line until his stutter

disappeared, and they fell in love. Anders
made a wedding dress for her sewn
from the island's large white flowers,
and she wove a suit from his own yarn.

After you died, we packed the book away
but I've wondered in the years passed
how you could have known that day
what I couldn't have known to ask:

Did you see my future appear
in the vision before your death?
For I'm in love with a woman whose hair
drifts down her back like tapestry threads,

her skin dark brown, her home an island
halfway around the world. In dreams
she's curled her fingers into your hand,
the two of you rising over vast green seas.