Cinderella Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

No. Her feet no longer hurt
from dancing and romancing.
She’s left her slippers behind,
her mirror unsilvered.

Her castle roof leaked.
Knocking winds found
cracks in the casements.
Her prince died in her arms
of gout. Her twin sons
fled their home after his funeral,
chased by two uncles
who yearned to usurp
her husband’s crown.

Razor-thin as her old story
she slid inside a mulberry tree
beneath the hunger moon.
Became a layer slim
as pulp, shed of glass
and satin skirts.

As branch she groped
to grab the light,
as roots to store
up sugars.

Her grieving tree
fell to ghost one night,
milled as lucent paper
on which is written
her new fable –
what splits
along its seams
and why she dived
inside a tree.

—

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet whose work appears widely in journals and anthologies who loves Visitant people.