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14 The Goose Girl On her handkerchief, she carries three drops of blood and they tell her, If your mother only knew, her heart would break in two. But she doesn’t—only the girl knows and the geese she drives out deep into the country, like the secret I tried to tell my mother in the garage about the older boy in the closet who laid me down under the openings of dresses. But I could not say it— it would be like all the geese lifting at once in their perfect “V,” the suddenness like something breaking in the kitchen and she says What was that? and I say, Nothing and sweep up the glass. The king knows something is wrong, so he asks the goose girl to tell her true story but she can’t, she promised, so he says, Tell it to the stove, and I think of our green oven with the light where you can watch the bread rise. I could put sticks in there and light them. But these are not my wet boots sticking in the marsh or my geese lighting on the pond. 15 When they honk, I can hear the quiet, how deep it is, and empty like the old boxes in the hall closet from J.C. Penney and The Crescent, which is closed now, its windows empty of snow-flecked carolers and deer turning their mechanical heads. We used to stop there and stare in, and the sidewalk glittered, and the lamps came on. ...

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