Unraveled

I blame Kristin Lavransdatter

Hello, Poetry Friend

Callie R. Feyen has been writing about my heart book, Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter, over at Tell Me A Story That’s True. After she had a not-so-lovely experience with the book in graduate school, I am the person who got her to read it again, to walk with the ghosts in its 1,124 pages.

Kristin met an elf maiden, she was complicit in two deaths, she broke a man’s heart, she broke a man’s heart, she broke a man’s heart, she broke a man’s heart, and in the final chapter of her life she does a heroic deed that I do not think she could have done if she had not let her life be unraveled by love.

I read Kristin for the first time in 2019. I continue to read it. I have never stopped. I have it on Audible and in hard copy, and my hard copy is — I confess — more marked up than my Bible. (In my defense, I have only had this Bible since 2022.)

I would not have written the poems in Love & other Mysteries without Kristin.

I would not be playing around with hymns without Kristin.

And I would not be singing all the ding-dang time at church without Kristin.

Callie writes that Kristin “was never happy with who she was, and was unequivocally and completely loved.”

I don’t think I knew how completely loved I was until Kristin. She cracked me open. To use Callie’s language, Kristin unraveled my tightly wound spool of red thread, and red spilled and dripped from my fingers and onto the page in dozens of poems. She sowed fireweed all over my mountain. I am still ablaze.

Here’s to the slow burn.

The Axe-Bearer’s Love Song 

Stay here. I did not ask for you to come.
I came because you needed me. Because
I needed to see you. Go back. Go home.
Tonight I swear I will not break God’s laws.

You must light my way, Kristin. Light it all.
Side by side we pray—your hand oh so close.
Look into my eyes. Take the lead. Don’t fall.
Don’t make me touch you. Not now, not when those

years between us might rip free. Remember
all those times I laughed? I tried everything
to keep you from feeling my love’s embers.
Too late you gave to me a wedding ring.

New morning snow falls from heaven’s highest
and I regret that I was so pious.

Happy poeming!

Megan