They say she comes from places that don’t keep records.
It is not a hometown so much as a threshold. It is the tree line after rain or the hollow where fog collects. It is the bend in a trail where your thoughts go quiet. People who swear they’ve seen her never agree on the details. They only agree on the feeling, the chill of recognition like a hand on the back of the neck.
I’ve been exploring that feeling lately. It’s the old folklore instinct that some figures aren’t meant to be solved. They are only meant to be encountered. These three poems represent my small mythic ephos of the same wandering presence. These women share one rule: they can’t be held.
What I love about folklore is that it doesn’t ask for proof. It asks you to listen.
Borrowed Bed
They said she walked out
of the forest one day.
Branches in her hair,
moss at her sleeves.
Cheeks streaked
with mud from the lake.
Some say she was born of fire,
others from the sky.
That’s why her eyes
were dressed in cloudy gray.
He took her in,
cleaned her wounds,
stroked the twigs
from her hair.
At night, she still hears
the forest calling —
leaves breathing her name
against her ear
as she pretends not to hear
in a borrowed bed.
The Stranger
There is a stranger
walking in my shoes.
She steps out into the night
when the air is cool.
Over moonlit meadows
she slips her feet,
whispering to mountains
sleeping beneath.
She walks long-lost trails
over steep hills —
her shadow echoing
through what silence left.
Still searching for a place
without a name.
The Corners of Your Mind
She glows in the moonlight,
dancing in the mist.
Pink petals dress her hair,
illuminates her skin.
Not a sound comes from her feet
as she slips through the night.
She floats above the mountains,
forever unbound.
By day, she wanders free,
flowers in her hair,
her feet bare on the earth.
By night, she hides in caves of stone,
a veil of mist behind her crown.
Her edges are smudged;
you'll be trying to find
the scent of her
as she passes by.
You thought you could trace
her footprints in the sand,
but you'll be searching forever—
her outline fading
in the corners of your mind.
(This poem was first published in Harmony Magazine, Issue 1 2024)
One myth, three masks
Read together, these poems become a folk creature with three tellings:
- In one, she is the foundling from the forest who can’t stop hearing the woods call her back.
- In another, she is the nocturnal self—your own stranger—walking toward the unnamed.
- In the last, she is memory’s dancer: beautiful, bright, and impossible to pin down.
If there’s a moral (folklore always pretends it doesn’t have one), it might be this: some parts of us are not meant for ownership. Not by lovers. Not by daylight. Not even by the self that wants tidy explanations.
Some presences come to remind us that belonging and captivity are not the same thing.
And maybe that’s why she keeps appearing in my poems—mud on her cheeks, mist in her hair—asking the oldest question in the oldest language:
Will you let me be undefined?
Related post: Explore Mythical Poems
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