THREADS OF GOLD

THREADS OF GOLD, by Adele Gardner

 

 

Ariadne, robed in threads of gold,

picks at her hem while in her father’s court.

Unnoted, gold pools at her feet,

a glittering stain speckled with blood

as she tears her fingers on metal mesh.

Each year it’s the same:

young men who argue, arrogant,

believing their fathers’ wealth makes any difference;

young maids who weep when they find their only treasure

isn’t worth enough to save them.

 

Ariadne, the princess, the privileged,

head bowed in her corner, hidden,

while Father’s eyes penetrate the gloom to find her,

his golden star, his actual audience:

each scream in the labyrinth a pin to hold her here.

With nothing to call her own–nothing that is not his–

Naked, the last thread severed, she unmakes

his gift, changing golden gown

to escape ladder, a slim thread strong enough to swing

out the window when the moon is high.

 

Naked, on the beach, she has nothing left

but herself and this gold thread

to bribe the youth who’d slay her father by night

while the hungry ghosts roam labyrinth walls,

her father’s chambered heart,

banging into corners, caroming to barrel down

any who would enter here,

till all thread of direction’s lost.

 

But Ariadne bargains, shows the secret

entrance below the listening posts

where the ghosts walk,

their clamor defeaning until one staggers,

dizzy-drunk, and plasters the wall

to become a ghost himself.

But Ariadne’s heart is true.

Gold thread does not break

like her father’s word.

She spills out treasure at his feet–

gold, heart, girl–

asks only that he use gold thread to chain

the beast, heart’s promise binding with sweetness

where iron only kills,

saving herself, and him.

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A cat-loving cataloguing librarian, Adele Gardner  is an active member of SFWA and a lifetime member of SFPA with master’s degrees in English literature and library science. She’s had a poetry collection (Dreaming of Days in Astophel) as well as 285 poems and stories published in venues such as Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Pedestal Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Legends of the Pendragon, NewMyths.com, Strange Horizons, James Gunn’s Ad Astra, and more.  Gardner is a two-time third-place winner in SFPA’S Rhysling Awards and a third-place winner in the Balticon Poetry Contest of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society.  Two stories and a poem earned her honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. A graduate of Clarion West Writer’s Workshop, Adele lives and writes under her middle name to honor her father, mentor, and namesake, Delbert R. Gardner, for whom she serves as literary executor.