In that secret place, a sea lantern swings,

splashing shards of jade and teal

into the folded silk of the rock.

 

The bowed hag’s watery grief

seeps its magic into the splinters

as she waits with clamped wings.

 

She is frozen into a waterfall of stone,

onyx daggers pinning her into the strata

like a fingerprint.

 

Hooded and veiled, charmed hands

draped, she sucks the light as she dreams

of conjuring marble into cloud.