The Sawyer's Daughter

I watch the saw blade spin. It is a circle that turns and draws the shapes of fate. It changes
the shape of logs into something more manageable. Boards will be made into floors to be stained with blood. The turning builds a song of grief.
Rose bushes of thorns surround the mill. Roses are petals of blood. I am Rose. I am the
sawyer’s daughter. All of my memories are of the sawmill, like the sound of cold brook water
spilling across slick moss-covered stones, the ones that escaped being arranged into walls around each property. Like the sound of a song looking for lyrics. The sound of a tree being fed into the turbine-driven blade of the saw is poetic. The sound of my mother’s legs being pulled into the turbine-driven blade of the saw is poetic too. Grim poetry, Gruesome poetry. A sonnet stripped of a quatrain, more or less. But I know nothing of poetry, only blood.
My mother visits me on the blood-stained sawmill floor. She floats, legless above the
stained wood.
“Hush, little Rose,” she shushes. “Hush, and watch for the blood.”
I see the man, her husband, near the blade. I push. He falls. The world turns red and drips
off everything.
And yet she comes to me again. She visits me again on the blood-stained sawmill floor.
She floats legless above the stained wood.
“Hush, little Rose. Hush, and watch for the blood.”
It flows out of me. It flows down the inside of my thigh. My mother never visits me again on the
thrice blood-stained sawmill floor.If I were legless I wonder if I would bleed?