Today was a wretched, chilly, damp kind of day, and I think the poem might reflect that. Mostly, I was considering the sad, distant face my daughter makes when she is processing a story or song that is somehow melancholy. Her emotions are powerful to witness, but at the same time I am always wanting to shelter her. I thought about how the stories we tell change over time as we are prepared to understand them differently–something like Cinderella, which has the happy Disney version but a historical mess of gruesome source texts. Happily, my own child cares not at all for princess stuff, but the idea nevertheless gave rise to the poem. Here’s “Variorum.”