after the portrait of Catherine of Aragon by Michael Sittow I’ll say it again: I went to both marriages a virgin. See my white cap, its pleats lapping my face. My loosened hair. The painter asks me to imagine looking at something cradled in my palms so he can correctly mix the shadow of sockets and downcast lids. No other way, he says, because when the story begins Mary has no idea how it ends. My straight gaze would betray it all. He gives me a live infant. It’s a change to be sure. A fat-limbed, old-faced male child brushed into my not-dead arms. A silent goldfinch in his small fist, the other reaching for my mouth. If I were that bird, my child would be a bird. And under the snow-laden branches we would roost in our dark feathered lives, content to watch our pain pass far beneath us.