Love--and a hint of magic--may be all it takes to transform Galen into the poet Siobhan wants.
 

    Galen scratched out the words, obliterating their pale emulation of feeling in a blob of ink.

    "The right words and she'll swoon at your feet," his brother Connor had assured him before ushering him out of their wheelwright shop, insistent he could finish the day's work on his own.  "The wrong ones and her father's liable to come break your feet instead."

    Galen stared at the paper in front of him.  The oil lamp illuminated line after line of blacked-out words and half-formed phrases.  "My love is like the sun," one began.  Galen abandoned the sentiment when the only images it conjured were of sunburnt skin and flowers shriveling from too little rain.  They were poor metaphors for any declaration of love, and insulting when one wanted to woo a farmer's daughter during a drought.

    You're too practical to be a poet, Galen told himself, plunging his steel-tipped pen into the ink bottle before burying his face in his ink-spotted hands.  But a poet was what Siobhan wanted.  He had overheard her telling her sisters how she dreamed of a man who would come to her bedroom window under cover of night and proclaim his love in verse.

    "Someone who will compare me to a rose or a summer's day," she had said, clasping her hands to her breast and sighing.

    Galen looked at the paper.  He had mentioned a rose, and he had mentioned summer.  One had thorns; the other was ungodly hot.

    The door to their two-room cottage burst open, and Connor strode inside, his bearing as carefree as Galen's was awkward.  "How comes the poetical masterpiece, baby brother?"

    Galen rolled his eyes.  That moniker had been annoying when he was a boy; it was humiliating now that he was seventeen.  "Must you call me that?"

    "I must," Connor said, leaning over to peer at Galen's ink-blotted scribbling, "because until you learn how to court a lady properly, you're still a baby."

    Galen tried to crumple up the paper, but Connor snatched it away and held it up to the oil lamp.

    "Oh, for the love of the good Lord, Galen, did you really mean to compare her to a cabbage?"

    "I just thought..."  Galen crossed his arms and sat back with a huff.  "I like cabbage."

    "Well, I fancy a pint of beer now and again, but I wouldn't tell a lass she smelled like one."  Connor shooed him out of the chair.

    "What are you doing?" Galen asked, staggering as his cramped legs threatened to buckle beneath him.  He had been in that chair for hours.

    Connor sat, grabbed a new sheet of paper, and took up the pen.  "So what is it you like about her?"

    "I don't know.  She's..."  Galen thought for a moment, then let out a noisy exhale that set his lips flapping.  "I don't know."

    "Just pick a feature.  Her eyes, her hair, her nose..."  Connor twirled his hand, as if the motion would draw forth an answer.

    "Her eyes, I guess.  Or maybe..."  Galen shoved his hands into his pockets and paced across the room.  He had spent enough days watching Siobhan stroll past the shop on her way into town.  But for every feature he thought of, be it her slender hands or her dimpled cheeks, another two presented themselves as more poetic candidates.  "It could be her hair.  But no, that's not it."  He stomped his foot and declared with confidence, "No, it's her eyes."

    "Perfect.  What color are they?"

    Galen slumped against the wall.  "Now that you ask, I'm really not sure."

    Connor threw the pen on the table, sending a splatter of ink across the paper.  "You're hopeless, baby brother."

    "I love her because..."  Galen's voice trailed off as he recalled an image with which none could compete—the first shovel of dirt onto his parent's caskets.  "I remember the way she took my hand at Ma and Da's funeral and asked if there was anything she could do."

    Connor regarded him for a moment, his mouth quirked at an odd angle, then leapt to his feet and ushered him toward the door.

    "What are you—"

    "You go screw up your courage with a few pints at the pub," Connor said, "and by the time you come back, I'll have you something poetical enough to win the love of Siobhan and every cousin she has between here and Dublin."