Changeling Child by Catherine Fahey

I was born in a blizzard. At least

that’s what my mother says and she

should know, for she was there.

Never a time to be switched for anyone

else and I have too much of my father,

grandmother, aunt in me. Never

my own person, always

a reflection, a receptacle

for their dreams, a well

for wishes. I recite

my ancestors for seven generations,

trace their lives to the specific village;

I relive their names, retell

their stories, dead and faded

ideals I can never live up to.

I retreat into my self and search

for stories and pathways to take

me outside myself and away

with the fairies but that doesn’t work

in the suburbs with prideful lawns

where safety is invisibility is

fitting in. I hide in books, keep my words

swallowed, my eyes open, my hands hoping.

Bio

Catherine Fahey is a poet and librarian from Salem, Massachusetts. When she’s not reading and writing, she’s knitting or dancing. Her chapbook The Roses that Bloom at the End of the World is available from Boston Accent Lit. You can read more of her work here.

Author's note

In European folklore, a changeling is a fairy child, left with humans to replace the human child the fairies stole away. The changeling initially looks & behaves as a human baby, but over time, there are changes in appearance or behavior. Many have an insatiable appetite, or may develop a physical difference. Eventually, the family realizes that their baby has been replaced, and tries to cast out the fairy child. Sometimes they would put the infant in the fire, to burn the fairy out, sometimes they would leave it out in the wilderness.

Despite looking exactly like my aunt and my younger brother, I was the odd one out in my family. I spent too much time alone, reading books, and generally ignoring the pile of cousins and siblings playing and fighting around me. When she couldn't get my attention (I was too immersed in a novel), my aunt would say that I was "away with the fairies." Sometimes, when I was a teen, and feeling particularly outcast, I would think that being a changeling would be a good thing, and preferable to the mundane life I was trapped in.