Michael Goodfellow

In some old houses, you could see marks drawn to ward off spirits and ill intent. Sometimes around the hearth or lintel. Most of the time running down the middle of the door. The ones up top thin and cross-hatched. Those at the bottom circular and rough, as if drawn by children. The doors meant: what you can see from the outside. What you should see first. Like when you open your eyes in the morning. Or what you should see last, before stepping out of daylight. The first time I saw them, my breath slipped out. Lines like a tangle of birches in winter. Or marks to mean this water is deep. Love was lost here. Don’t come in. I stood there, dead from what I hadn’t imagined. Long ago, when the door was first hung, the family gathered to know how the symbols would be marked. They each stepped forward to draw in finish the color of rust. That night in bed, their fingers red. The stains lasted for days. Hexafoil they called them. Marian marks. Apotropaic. The words ended where fingertips stopped and the finish began.

Bio

Michael Goodfellow is the author of Meadow Work and two other poetry collections published by Gaspereau Press. His poems have appeared in the The Malahat Review, Literary Review of Canada, The Dalhousie Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Nova Scotia.