‘A World Without the Wednesday Child’: A Poem by Kimberly Fore

A World Without
the Wednesday Child

“Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace.
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go.
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for a living.
But the child that is born on Sabbath day,
Is bonny and blithe, good and gay.”  —nursery rhyme

To cauterize the midweek sun,
And quench the melancholic flame,
A gilded era has begun,
Excising Wednesday’s woeful name.

Now Monday progeny ignite,
A luminescent, dew drop bloom;
And Tuesday’s darlings take to flight,
To pirouette across the room.

Then Thursday’s eager, eagle-eyed,
Eclipse the boundaries of space;
They hasten through the roaring tide,
To lead a never-ending chase.

Then Friday’s altruists disperse
A feral cupidity of gold;
They hemorrhage what misers lose,
To swaddle outcasts from the cold.

The Saturday brigades arise,
To orchestrate the steel and stone;
They hammer mountains to the skies,
To settle an eternal loan.

And Sunday’s paragons ascend,
Omniscient, tranquil, and profound;
Where all trajectories amend,
And neither fray nor flaw is found.

But in this lacquered, rosy world,
There is no prism of a sigh;
With every tear and sorrow furled,
No twilight lingers in the sky.

For woe is no depleting ache,
It breathes the alchemy of grief;
It fuses fragments when they break,
And grants the heavy heart relief.

To force the birth on Tuesday eve,
Or halt the push to dodge the scars,
Is but a frantic web to weave,
For only dark reveals the stars.

It steals the depth of music’s flow,
The poetry hearts dare to sing;
The measure of how far to go,
The empathy that sorrow brings.

A world designed to banish sting,
Is gorgeous as a tongueless bell;
A hollow shape that none can ring,
A brass abyss of polished hell.

Kimberly Fore is a writer who resides on a Virginia mountainside with her family. She is an MFA candidate completing her first novel and collection of poetry. Her research in literary theory has been published in Scholars Crossing.