Throwing Myself In

The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in. – W. H. Auden

 

Were the story of my mother and father a fairytale, I would be what is left after the prince cleared his way to the sleeping beauty, kissed her, and stood there, both looking into each other’s eyes a moment, before looking around at shaking walls and rising dust, whatever words between them lost in the sound of crumbling and falling.

            I wouldn’t be the world my mother knew brought down around her. Wouldn’t be the world my father saw as a bramble he could help escape from suddenly a trap. Wouldn’t be the lifting of a curse become the lifting of what held one world, one life, together, without which life cannot go on the same.

           I would be a part of each of them as they stood helpless, not knowing what to do. I would be the last thing seen, the beginning of a ruin made from each other.

 

 

previously published in the collection Everything We Think We Hear (Floricanto Press, 2015)