The night at the ball
I met a foreign prince
He told me he liked my shoes and smile
And I've seen him around here since

He is a Prince Charming
He searched through the land
However, others had ideas
A spy shook both our hands

Another imposter to the throne
Claimed to be his girl
She took his photo on the side
And cracked our china world

And so, I thought of him again
As he rode on horseback
After many months of zilch
The prince and I, at last?

The prince was very perfect
He was all charm and looks
A part of me could never speak
To the man I knew from books

But soon I finally saw the light
And the prince had just about ceased
Prince Charming is for Cinderella
And I like Beauty and The Beast.

You looked like Prince Charming
I didn't know what was coming
Letters were sent out to the whole town
Written was an invitation to a ball in the castle
Th brat sisters taunted
The stepmother always evil
Fairy godmother came
And made me beautiful
I danced with the prince
Leaving him hanging by twelve
Left a shoe for a clue
And he searched the whole town
Later found out
I was the one
I saw the prince
Apparently he wasn't the one
I danced with someone else
It was a butler
How'd I end up with him
I have no idea
But for him to be the prince I thought
I declined the real prince's offer
And went for the butler
The prince was sad
I suggested he look at my sisters
For they were desperate
Mother was glad the prince came
But the prince has taken no interest to each of them
The prince kept searching for a wife
Sister's still desperate
Mother just as evil
and I lived happily ever after just fine with my own prince

So this isn't the demon
you told me about

It's awfully common,
you say,
of a person my age
to feel hyper-reactive
once in a while
To walk a mile
in her own head,
painting it petty and sparkling

But maybe I should
at least know better
than to ride the flamboyant
hell
To make the day one
long yell
"Let's piece together
these undeserved rags,"
they make me think
as I glide from
one face to the next

I am not Cinderella
I am her
kin
If I were old enough
I would drink myself
down with a bottle of
gin
Of gin made from kin
and refused help

"Untalented", I claim
heresy to my personality
Thinking, "everyone looks better than me,
but no, I can be better than them"
And I hear you say,
"What a sin, tsk, tsk, tsk!"

And the other demons,
they say, "Let her
stay!
Let her
stay!"

The diva's not the demon
you speak of

Who is it really?
Introduce him or her
Has it ever occurred
to you that
we would make
a good pair
of masters, of narcissists,
of lovers

A team everywhere
in all the bad places
Performing an absurd show
Breaking hearts

There must be a how, there must be a way,
For my prince to come rescue me some day.
All my life, I've dreamed of who he could be,
Men have come and gone, unworthy of me.
I think endlessly of the things in which I need,
A knight in shining armor, upon his trusty steed.

The mirror looking back at her
screams compliments over the loud music
coming from the stereo behind.
With artfully smudged eyeliner,
she slips into the little black dress
purchased from the cheap lingerie shop
down the street from her apartment complex.
Six inches above the concrete sidewalk
clicking with every step,
a lit cigarette dangling at her teeth,
she walks proudly to the ball
twenty minutes past midnight.

The morning after;
spiked hot coffee in hand
to cure mistakes of the previous night
and a knock on the door
greets a worsening headache.
The door opens to a well dressed man
and a tiny glass slipper
atop a diamond-studded throne.
He holds the delicate shoe to her foot,
toe nails painted black,
and patiently waits for a response.

“Those aren’t my red stilettos.”

i say all the right things
always thinking ahead
never fully present, just
hoping you won't recognize the mask
hoping you'll fall in love with
silly old me
i wear my skinny jeans as a mask,
ironically to conceal the fact
that i'm both skinny and pale
i drone on about helping people,
when all i really wanna do
is help myself
only i can't
does that make me a bad person?
mostly, i'm pale because i live
in a pitch black cave, forever
haunted by bullies and ancient wounds
it's the wounds that get you early,
that are the hardest to heal
still,
i sometimes venture out of the cave
recklessly careful,
tequila is my kryptonite
upgrades my powers to carefully reckless
only i'm no superman
i'm the clown that paints his wounds with bright colors
that's a lie
i'm more like cinderella with a beard
always on the clock,
waiting for the glass slipper to crack
my **** is pretty cute though
no kidding
it's out there somewhere
looking for that beautifully complicated wound
hoping,
wondering,
is it compatible with mine?

I go out, for once.
You appear before me and reach instantly for my beloved treasure chest, but I am uncomfortable. No means no tonight, as does it every other night.
You do not step back.
Only the chairs' arms are willing to support me, so my own small hand reaches for your twelve o'clock and now it is you who must flee.
The candles' tongues lick you on your way out.
Explicit.
Are you happy now? Where's your horse and carriage babe?
By the way, you dropped your ******* shoe.
Goodnight.

It wasn't just the shoe.

I like to think that she wanted to go to the ball because she was tired of being defined by her job scope. I mean what she did was even in her name -- Cinderella from the cinders that smudged her face from cooking all day. Cinderella the maid. Cinderella the cook. So she went to the ball to regain that sense of identity and she was ever grateful to her fairy godma for the dress and glass slippers because the fairy saw that Cinderella was just a girl and girls no matter how tired, like pretty things. And this is also true of boys, but I'm not going there.

And I like to think that when she went to the ball she didn't know it was the Prince but he was hot and the strange blushy reaction she got when she saw him didn't really confuse her because it just reaffirmed that she was human and it was right and natural to feel all these things. And she didn't know what to say when she danced with him, so she offered him a recipe for stew and told him a secret (barley grain made stew taste even better) and the Prince was amused, and they weren't in love with each other. Yet. And when the clock struck midnight and he offered to kiss her, she politely declined because she didn't know him all that well, except that he had been very kind and listened to her. Then she ran off.

And when she went back to her old tired life, she was sad but glad because she knew that she was alive and human after all. Except sometimes she worried about him because he didn't have barley grain in his stew. And the Prince went back to his clean well-ordered life but he thought often of the girl who had been so obviously not been of the nobility. And he might have smiled at the memory of her from time to time when he was alone. Until one day he realised that he was in love with the memory of her and he needed to rectify that. So he brought out the shoe and went searching. And I like to think that the glass slipper was just a metaphor for how fragile appearances can be, that we shouldn't take things at their face value, because when he finally found her, she was covered in muck and grime but he recognised her anyway. And she wasn't proud of her appearance but she wasn't ashamed either because it was only a necessary result of all the work she'd been doing.

And I like to think that the Prince realised how wrong he was to have fallen in love with the memory of her because the real woman was so fully present and alive, incomparable to his flimsy memories.

And she, she was glad because he had recognized her. And that was how they fell in love. Only after all the hard work. Oh there was more hardship later on in their lives, but I like to think that at that re-encounter they fell in love because they knew that neither of them was afraid to work to get what they wanted.