we were sisters, weren't we?
i remember when we were young -
everything was easy then, wasn't it?
before your beauty bloomed and
my plainness stayed,
before the curve of your hips and the sparks of your smile,
set my mother's heart on fire.

we were sisters, weren't we?
when we used to kneel by the hearth for fun,
digging up buried treasure,
sifting through the ashes with our clean-girl hearts,
laughing.

that was before the bitterness choked our home.

we were sisters, weren't we?
you used to crawl under the covers with me,
whisper ghost stories and laugh at me when i got scared.
i reflected your prettiness then,
it shone on me like
the sun on a mirror,
my glass face unmemorable and making yours
all the more dazzling
(not that we knew it:
we were both beautiful,
before we knew any better)

we were sisters, weren't we?
i held your hand when my mother cut you with her words,
i stood up for you when she worked you, i did.
i never once raised a word when you would come to my room,
crying and
raving about her.
i held you when your missing for your own mother rose up sharp in your heart, and i
defended you when my mother spread words like thorns in the villages.

i never once envied you your beauty.

we were sisters, weren't we?
and when that prince came for you,
laughing and
pebbling our window with stones,
i helped you shimmy out into his arms.
i would clean the mud off your shoes when you would stumble back in,
right before the sun came up,
i would put you to bed and make you tea to warm the early-morning chill out of your rose-pink cheeks,
and i waited for you that night you didn't come back.

we were sisters, weren't we?

and you left us.

Feb 27


"Dear, complete and total *******, M Vogel:

Your account will be back to normal on Oct 27.
Because our moderators have reviewed and agreed with the members' concerns about your work, this suspension cannot be reconsidered.

Please read FAQs for more information..


Why did this happen?
'on ****, love.. and helping my cute as **** stepsister become relational.' was removed for 'Inappropriate/Obscene'
Jan 18

'on ****, love.. and helping my cute as **** stepsister become relational.' was removed for 'Inappropriate/Obscene'
Jan 18

'on ****, love.. and helping the cute as **** daughter of the woman who likes my father, become relational. (rethemotherfuck,post) [and ex(themotherofthefuck)splicit]' was removed for 'Inappropriate/Obscene'
52 seconds ago

'on ****, love.. and helping the cute as **** daughter of the woman who likes my father, become relational. (rethemotherfuck,post) [and ex(themotherofthefuck)splicit]' was removed for 'Inappropriate/Obscene'
52 seconds ago

'on ****, love.. and helping my cute as **** stepsister become relational. (rethemotherfuck,post)' was removed for 'Inappropriate/Obscene'
45 seconds ago

'on ****, love.. and helping my cute as **** stepsister become relational. (rethemotherfuck,post)' was removed for 'Inappropriate/Obscene'
45 seconds ago


Please try to get in line with the quality and moral character of all our other writers on the site, or kindly ****."

Love,
HP Moderation
(site de-scumbagging division)


"Hmmm..?"
~M Vogel

youtu.be/uXEUW792etk



"umm..
I created this for children;; Children... understand?"
~Elliot

youtu.be/54OYS_mZlBE

Most of us know the tale of Cinderella,
But do you know the original German story?
It’s different from the version that I grew up with.
It’s called “Aschenputtel,” and it’s gory.
 
Cinderella’s stepmom and two stepsisters
Are nasty, ornery, bossy, ******, and mean.
They’re very good at belittling Cinderella;
And the sisters vie for the role of future queen.
 
Cinderella wants to attend a ball,
But her stepmom gives her some difficult tasks, and so
When some birds help the girl complete them,
The woman STILL refuses to let her go.
 
Here no fairy godmother comes to help.
Cinderella goes to the grave of her mother
Where she'd planted a branch that grew to a tree,
Which miraculously gives her a gown like no other.
 
When Cinderella goes to the King’s fancy ball,
She makes a tremendous impression on the prince.
Of course, no one’s able to recognize her,
And the competition makes the stepsisters wince.
 
For two nights in a row the same thing happens.
Cinderella must be in excellent shape,
For each night the prince attempts to pursue her,
Yet each night she makes a clean escape.
 
On the THIRD night he has a bright idea:
“Aha!” he says. “Someone, bring me some tar.
If I spread goop all over the steps of the palace,
That gorgeous sneak won’t manage to get very far.”
 
(Here you have to suspend even more belief.)
As Cinderella hurries to flee from her beaux,
She leaves behind one slipper in the tar.
(WHY more slippers aren’t stuck there, I do not know.)
 
On finding the slipper, the prince yells, “Piece of cake!
Now I’ll find the owner of this dainty shoe.”
When he arrives at the home of the nasty stepsisters,
The poor guy bites off more than he can chew.
 
The first sister chops off her obtrusive big toe
So that her foot can fit inside the slipper.
You see, the slipper’s not made of the kind of material
That stretches, and, of course, it has no zipper.
 
The prince starts to leave with his bride-to-be
But notices that her slipper is filled with blood.
“I don’t think that this is my future wife,”
He says and nips that nightmare in the bud.
 
In order to make her foot fit in the slipper,
The second stepsister cuts off part of her heel.
Imagine how much blood gushes forth from that.
Shaking his head, the prince says, “This is unreal.”
 
Finally, Cinderella takes her turn.
And what do you know? The slipper’s a perfect fit!
The prince—eager to exit that crazy scene—
Takes Cinderella and leaves lickety split.
 
(I hope the prince kept his wits about him.
You’d think he would, for he’s a thoughtful fella.
Certainly, he washed out all the blood
Before giving the slipper to Cinderella!)
 
Early on I told you about some birds
That helped Cinderella when she was down and out
By completing her tasks and delivering her gown and slippers.
They knew what the stepsisters were all about.
 
Well, the stepsisters come on the day of the wedding,
To mooch off Cinderella—as you can surmise.
As they amble along with the wedding couple,
The birds fly down and peck out both of their eyes.
 
Such is the fate of the mean and bossy stepsisters,
Who were deceitful and cruel, as you recall.
Call it karma, their just deserts, or comeuppance,
But let it be a lesson for us all.

- by Bob B

When the layers peel off,
I hope you don't love yourself for the reasons they love you
When the dollars flutter and the spotlight blinds
I hope you know your worth is not physical
Even when the money is
This isn't the fulfillment you need
When you don't rest easy at night
I hope you remember you should be loved for more
You are loved for more
Your mother..
Please,
I hope you tell your mother you love her
I hope you tell her she's done nothing wrong
She's hurt
And maybe we all feel that
Because this world holds more for you
I hope you know opportunity isn't hiding from you
I hope you seek it out
I hope you remember that easy way is not always the best way
The things we are capable of failing at
Reap the most self esteem when we succeed
I hope you find what makes you happy
What makes you full
And I hope you never look back

http://youtu.be/RGFytiWwsRo
(this is a link to a video that I created for this poem)
Ridgewood (Where We Wait)
We take the most delicious train
to the Queens-Brooklyn border to get here
Where everything is liminal, uncertain, undecided
Even the foundation, Arbitration Rock, at the house on Onderdonk
Was buried for centuries, dug up, and chucked on another imaginary line
The streets are on a grid, and the border on a diagonal
making a stair-stepping hypotenuse of the confused
A challenge to put your time to good use
even on the oz-like yellow brick road on Stockholm
You hear Poles on the street muttering “Marnowanie mojego
czasu tutaj” through the bachata dripping
from the apartments above the stores on Fresh Pond Road

Two of the best restaurants in the boroughs
Rosa’s pizza and Zum Stammtisch mark
the north and south borders of the hill where we wait  
During the seventy-seven riots, Ridgewood
seceded from her stepsister, broke from Boswijk and Breuckelen
-
There’s racism here like carbon monoxide smoke:
at the Ridgewood Y, a man sweats through his shirt
revealing swastikas pierced through the skin underneath
and the Romanian dentist down the street drilling
says “Cred ca am pierd timpul meu aici”
through the machinery scream and burning enamel
she won’t say this if you understand what she means

Walking past the 99 cent stores and the pharmacies,
remembering that there is good, fast, and cheap
But you can only have two of them at the same time,
Crazy Loretta, under her navy knit woolen hat
in her pink sweatsuit and winter coat, smokes
her shaking hand-rolled cigarettes below the train
trestle grinning with her jaw-jutting through
her inch thick specs.  She waggles her chicken bone fingers
saying, “Hiya honey” when you walk by.
If you are brave enough to stop and talk to her,
she’ll tell you that her nephew plays
for the Texas Rangers and her daughter
is a doctor and she’ll probably give you bedbugs
She’ll tell you, fascinated, like a child: “when you squish them - the blood comes out”
She’ll tell you the same thing tomorrow - Loretta forgets.  
In her mind, a phrase like green smoke from her youth
Ich glaube, ich bin meine Zeit hier

The playgrounds are packed with children
practicing how to swear, the girls huddled
reading Twilight like the Bible, and the boys
huddled reading the girls like the Bible
A woman yells to her son to come home a third time
and mutters “Creo que estoy perdiendo mi tiempo aquí”

Buried in Machpelah Cemetary less than a mile from my house,
is the place Houdini is still staging his greatest escape
He has a wide audience.  Sometimes I think there are more dead
residents of Ridgewood than living ones.  The cemeteries stretch
the borders of the appropriate spilling into Christ
the King high school’s front lawn.  Driving Cypress Hills street,
the Manhattan skyscrapers rise looking tomb-toothed parallaxed and
blurry through ephemeral sepulchres, stones, and cement angels pointing at the sky

On one of the stones it says simply: Videor perdo temporis hic
I think we are wasting our time here.

I finish scooping a large serving of stir fry onto a styrofoam plate
with the two metal spatulas left on the counter for me.
I sidestep the forty something year old man who is our host
who has opened this house, his families house, to us
his extended family.
I jump over the dog and take a seat in a metal folding chair that has been set by the table
which is meant to seat 4, but is seating 9 tonight.
To my right is an old friend, the estranged stepsister of the sleeping hostess
to my left; the father of another friend who is, himself the best friend of the host
and a regular in this kitchen.
His son sits on the other side of the girl to my right
his girlfriend is across from him
and to his right is the three year old niece of  the hostess.
Her Five year old sister sits across from her.
at the end is the 14 year old daughter of the hostess
and across from me is her sister, the reason I am here.
We eye each other across the table,
trying to say something to each other
trying to reveal the sound our heartbeats make,
but our words are frozen in our throats.
They would be pierced though by flying words
and noodles
and laughs
and forks.
they would be pierced through by the energy here
by the connectedness
by everything.
If we were to say anything
it would be rendered so completely useless so quickly
that we can't.
Or so we tell ourselves
as we sit at this table
with our large, crazy, extended, adopted family
knocking elbows as we try to eat
passing around the Parmesan cheese
listening to the dogs barking at us for accidentally kicking them
as they tried to forage for food scraps under our chairs
not telling us they were there.
There is a happiness here
a buzzing
an energy
this is a family
this is a family

and I belong

lover
igniting fires
in homes
in me
ephemeral
parental vision
hanging close
sufficient space
stolen kisses
wrong
loving a
stepsister

All the once upon a time stories that end in happily ever after have the flawless handsome Prince charming who meets the sweetest princess or young maiden who becomes a princess after they marry (typically approximately 12 to 18 hours or so after they meet usually because the sweet young lady was rescued by the Prince because she was singing randomly and dancing around with woodland animals who do her laundry and she fell off of a tower or was attacked by some lady who literally has no job but spends her entire life just being evil for the sake of being evil and yet never starves to death despite the fact that her evil plots never actually allow her to aquire money or food of any sort.)
The girl is always polite
Everyone loves her
She usually has a waistline tinier than a flowerstem
And she sees the good in everyone
She is also gorgeous 100% of the time
Well I am NOT that girl
I can't alwaye be polite and perfect
I can't even be pretty
There are more people that hate me than there are people who can even tolerate me
I'm not the likable easy going type
I don't have a three inch waist (mainly because that is completely insane)
I can't find a way to like every person
I'm the jealous ugly stepsister Anastasia in Cinderella
I'm the wicked witch in the wizard of Oz
I'm the wolf in the three little pigs
I'm the hag in snow white and the seven dwarves
I'm not the princess in the story
But fortunately, I don't need to be because life is not a fairytale
And you don't need to be prince charming
Hell, you don't even need to be anything like the lists I make about what my dream guy should be like
Because really, since when do I know what I actually want?
I certainly am always wrong about what I need
So here's the deal
You love me for me, be loyal, care about me because of my soul first and my looks having nothing to do with it, you give me eternity,
And I promise you the same.
I don't need you to catch me when I fall off a tower
That doesn't really happen much
I need you to catch the little pieces of me when I fall apart because the emotions were all too much
I don't need a happily ever after
And you don't need to be prince charming
Because I am not a princess

Repost if you are not a princess either
Please comment I love to read interpretations of my work and really any other thoughts you may have! :)

I'm trying to write a poem, because that's what I do
write poetry about me and you, you and I
those guys, these kids...

that time I choked on fireflies because every third word I'd say illuminated the sky and between every spark of light the shadows clenched my eyelids.  Or all of the times Elmer fastened them shut and I saw nothing but sticky, icky white glue

poems about something true, like the genetic connect between my cats- they're sisters
or the non genetic connect between me and my stepsister- i miss her
poems about hating the way I destroy each building block I set aside
poems about hanging on for the ride
I could write a poem each and every day about the birth of the earth in may
but when springtime arrives and lucious life thrives I can barely get out of bed
poems about irony
poems about the law of murphy

There's a poem I've written too many times about the criminal I am and all of my crimes
there's a poem I have not yet written in ink, about not knowing what why or how my thoughts think
there's a poem I will write, and it fills me with fright yet gets me through the night
because the beauty blooming from your eyes intoxicated me, like the hug from a drug pollenating

You can't simply try to write a poem- upchuck the acidic thoughts you think
they weigh you down like past and future hangovers
molded like heavy boulders almost tipping off your shoulders- you can't simply try to write a poem

It's like loving your cousin though you've barely known him
like a conch pressed to trying to hear the ocean
but it's really just your blood pumping in motion

I've always been
pretty melancholy
It's not hard to see it in my eyes
I've been that way my whole life
You might not think they're good ones
but I have my reasons
My parents divorced when I was very young
But I wasn't old enough to understand what that meant at the time
That couldn't really **** me up on its own
It led to a controlling stepfather though
who was always quick to put his hands on my face
whenever I said or did something he didn't like
as I was growing up
It also led to a stepsister
a daughter of my stepmother's
who was quick to do things
that I'll leave to your imagination
rather than talking about explicitly
And my Dad was an angry man
He threw things
Knives salt shakers you name it
It was always frightening to see
such displays of something that was in my blood
Don't get me wrong
I had a decent childhood overall
despite the ******* at two homes
and being ****** with at school for being fat
My adult life has been much better
I lost all the weight
I've had pretty girls
probably more of them than I deserve
I've been in jail
and on top of mountains
I've gotten drunk with my friends
and we've done drugs a few times
Okay lots of times
I like my **** just like my Dad
and I like my whiskey just like his Dad
It's in the blood
So I've had fun
I've had moments of bright yellow laughter
in between rose pink kisses
Bursts of joy
fresh and spring green
Dark red bouts of passion
tender ones in beds
and hard ones with fists
Fleeting silvery embraces of grief
Episodes of orange boisterousness
Soft cerulean calmnesses and peace
But all of these colors
are just random brush strokes and splatters
added to a canvas that was first entirely covered
with the deepest most aching shade of violet
immediately after being placed upon the easel
Someday maybe the violet won't show through to others
I'll always know it's there

In an unreserved room,
deep in drapes and gloom,
stood a wild-eyed deaf-mute
in a beltless cape,
his fingers speaking parts he played
in his stepsister's ****.

October
I feel that I have an unconventional belief/idea of love.
• To love is a verb, I think it's more an emotion rather than a permanent state of being.
• It can be used and expressed in different ways for different things, but it is all the same love. I may love some things or people more than others, but it's the same feeling. I love my mom and dad, I love reading, I love lasagna, I love the feeling I get when something is more amazing than I originally thought it would be.
• Love isn't a serious thing. It's okay to say to people you may barely know or at random times.
• Contrary to popular belief, I don't believe that you never stop loving someone. You can be in and out of love with someone, at points people are worth loving and at other times, they are less deserving. And I don't have to love them in that moment.
• Love is temporary. If I love a boy tonight, it doesn't mean that I will and/or must love him in thirty years, or six months, or even tomorrow morning.
• I am capable of loving several people simultaneously because several people may deserve my love at that time. It's a feeling that should be shared and expressed whenever appropriate and there shouldn't be consequences or guilt associated in sharing it.
• I don't believe there comes a point when you cross the line of liking someone to loving them, this line to me doesn't exist. You are not aware of the moment you fall in love with someone, because there is no definitive of love or falling into it.
• Love isn't a fairytale, myth, or fabricated term. It's real.
But I think the term and feeling of love is more romanticized than anything.

April*
Oh God, I think that I'm in love and everything has changed.
• Can a simple emotion really have this great of an impact?
• This is different from any other emotion. It's stronger and it hurts better than the love I have for coffee and ***** and my stepsister
• Love, it's a thing. And even though we were drunk when we admitted it, it still meant what we wanted it to mean.
• I won't ever stop loving you because you're never not deserving.
• I will love you tomorrow morning, and in six months, and in thirty years.
• It can't possibly be temporary because there are visions of us growing up, around, and into one another and still being happy together in the future
• Love like this isn't felt with everyone. I could never look at anyone the way I look at you. It's not something to be shared, it's special and specific to one person.
• I think I fell in love with you that night we laid on the mattress together and I traced the lines in your hands with my fingers.
• Love is when what you want finally aligns perfectly with what you need
• Love is what I feel for her
• And it is the best ******* feeling in the world

remember that time
I played your music instead of sleeping to keep
me from screaming at the flecks of dirt inside my mind
that remind me more of myself than anything
your music reassured me that I was alive and able to breathe
in and out, slowly, to the notes of the song
to the notes of the song that reminded me
that I was worth more than a boy
I'm worth more than a boy that uses me just
to have a laugh and tells me I'm hot when I am ice cold
and hiding in alaska because I don't belong in summer
when he's there looking for more snowflakes to burn
you shouldn't burn snowflakes,
all they want to do is fall quietly
they want to fall but they don't want anyone to see how
they fall or what they're falling on, becuase they
fall into oblivion before you can notice
well usually they do, but sometimes a boy will catch them and burn them
so he can laugh and make himself smile the only way he knows how to.
it's hard to make yourself smile if you're him and don't understand
the nature of snowflakes.
but your music will pull me down a road
i'll walk along it happy to forget about the tears I had just cried
and I'll stop at all the potholes admiring how they line the road
and all the grass growing in the little cracks
the yellow lines breaking them all up
did you know that roads are like arms?
they carry suffering with them and are
scarred in ways that is both natural and unnatural
they're essential to you and I's relationships
yes, our relationship is built up slowly by roads and arms
inching us closer and closer until we are too close to touch
and all I can do it look at your face and wish that
you'd noticed how the roads are like arms
and how they'd both made our relationship as real as it can be
(which is to say, as real as my heart or as real as your
gorgeous eyes that I can see as I stand this close)
I wish I wasn't this close, I wish I was close
enough to touch, to hold you in my arms and kiss away your
tears that are sure to be there sometimes, maybe
you could even hold me? you did say that
you were better than the boy who burns snowflakes
but that doesn't mean I am better than just a snowflake
that needs to make that boy happy before he does something
stupid to himself and I blame myself
perhaps it is best if I let him? it's only one snowflake
among one million, what do I matter compared to the life of one
boy who's life has gone terribly wrong and the only release he
has is burning snowflakes that aren't worthy of kisses?
besides
it's not like you would
really miss the way
the roads and arms built up the hope that
you could someday love me because
we both know that's not the case
because you're somewhere far away playing your guitar
and thinking of beautiful girls who resemble
the fairies and mermaids of disney movies
while I only resemble an ugly stepsister who
tries and tries to get the guy
but falls short because the
shoe is too short and she is too selfish
to even care that it belongs to another.
and you, you are peter pan
you are everyone's dream
why would you even look at me?
this writing is rambling
it means almost nothing but the words keep coming
and I can't stop them because I don't know what to say
so I say everything.
and I am a rose, but who likes roses?
roses have thorns, and they die
dandelions are beautiful, and they fly away
roses are nothing compared to all those beautiful dandelions that surround me.
now please if you remember anything about me,
from the way I breathe to the way my perfume smells
or the shade of my eye or the taste of my lips against yours,
remember that roads are like arms,
and that is what makes them beautiful enough to have held up our relationship against the tornado.
remember my love, that roads are like arms.

Another year older with a bullet between my teeth
And I never thought I’d make it this far.
I remember being sixteen and
Shedding tears of joy,
Shouting in pure rapture,
‘I’m alive! I’m alive!’

Another year older with a bullet between my teeth
And I am nine years old again
Staring up at a Monet,
Then a Van Gogh,
Then an artist I don’t know but love dearly
Because you have to love dearly
Before you can hold all this art
In the fractured mirror you call eyes.

Another year older with a bullet between my teeth
And this is the happiest poem I have written in awhile.
Tomorrow morning I will wake up
And I will be fifteen again
Sprawled out naked on the chopping block
Like fresh shot game.
But for now I am Cinderella dancing at the ball,
But this time I am my own prince,
This time midnight doesn’t come until I say it can,
This time there is no ugly stepsister
Or glass slipper
Or pumpkin shaped carriage waiting outside.

This time
I’m another year old and there is no bullet.
Just me and the clock tower
Singing out a sweet spring tune.

I write with a pink Bic now

My phone is white and out of storage and I’m not connected to the
   cloud because it freaks me out, so every time I delete a picture, she
   asks “are you sure?” And I “delete anyway”
My high school best friend’s cousin’s husband just died and I’m
   wondering why I’m weeping for a kin I never grew akin to, a mere
   stranger, a subtle blip in my matrix. But his poetry
   is beautiful, I know that. And his music is beautiful, I know that.
I drank a root beer float tonight and the night before, or did I eat it? It
   reminded me of buying 99 cent slushes at Convenient. Or the
   “healthy” slushes I bought to accompany my soft pretzel everyday
   in middle school.
On the terrace, everyone else ate hot dogs and I looked down,
   holding my soggy French fries and wondering what else there is out
   there besides ketchup and mustard: like in Princess Diaries when
   Julie Andrews puts mustard on her corndog. I always thought
   that was so cool.
Or when Mia Thermopolis sit sideways in her giant comfy chair after
   throwing darts at balloons filled with paint aka “stupid cupid stop
   picking on me” or is it… “hitting on me”
Remember when Ben Day asked for pictures and when you sent cute
   selfies in your sports bra, he responded, “okay, but can they not be
   of your face?”
Or when Ben Wilson taught you that “hurt people hurt people” and
   had “ultra conservative” on his Facebook page underneath political
   views and you had go ask what that meant. I Corinthians 1:13 or
   something like that was always my favorite bible verse because its
   the only one I ever learned by heart.
Hail Satan.
We all rot under late capitalism.
But I didn’t know that then. I know that now, but not then.
Now I wonder mostly about the ethics behind “procreating.” I wanna
   bear fruit, but I can’t even stand the thought of myself burning in a
   fiery pit, let alone my spawn.
But,
My stepsister is pregnant. She found out the “gender” today, “boy.”
   My nieces and nephews have had a very gendered upbringing, I
   guess I did too: barbies and bratz and Betty spaghetti.
I know everyone always says they just want a “healthy, happy baby”
But I have a crippling nicotine addiction and manic depression, I’m
   not healthy or happy.
Do you think I was the idea my parents pictured when my mom peed
   on that stick and got a plus sign?
Probably not.
I hate to disappoint.
They can live in the glory days when my cursive handwriting was
   better than anyone else’s in my second grade class. Olivia Layne
   Ulmer on that brown, dotted, lined paper.

With a yellow no.2 pencil.

The funny thing about a fairytale is
that there is only one princess—
only one or two heroes reaping the spoils
and life pretty much ***** for the rest.
As time has made me privy to this phenomenon,
I think that the pessimists must be wrong:
pointing out the falsehoods in the fantasies
when life has been a fairytale all along.
The problem doesn't lie in the fanciful plot,
or the neat and tidy "happily ever after”—
but rather in our assumptions that we are the protagonists
when there are so many other characters whose live's are disasters.
And truly the stories of the villains or helpers,
though exaggerated in their own right,
ring of far more truth and parallels
than the lead's perilous plight.
For I am no breathtaking beauty.
Won't stop some prince in his tracks.
I can't dance, I don't clean, my food is no good,
and when I sing my voice gargles and cracks.
I often can't find a shoe that will fit
for my toes are too long, or perhaps it's my heel.
So I can't identify with the hero written
because I have no idea how that feels.
It seems that when I went to audition,
though my intent was for the part of the lead,
the director thought I was joking
and then casted me as the Evil Queen.
For I'm afraid that I more closely mimic
An ugly stepsister or morally unsound witch—
so is it any wonder, then,
that life turned out to be a *****?
And I know—yes, I know—that these stories are just that:
fictional weavings of a life never lived,
spoon fed to children to teach them some lesson,
their intent, I’m sure, not to misgive.
But at some point the stories become more than just stories;
they are born from us and so us they do bear.
And you and I and us and them and this
is a reflection of what's written there.
And if this is so, which I argue it is,
then the fairytales are very true indeed.
And so, too, the happy endings, hero's journey,
villains and monsters and thieves.
Every story is an entire world,
and every world becomes our own.
And there simply isn't enough room for us all
to fall in love and call a castle home.
Someone has to be the villain.
Someone the foil. Someone the friend.
Someone the helper and someone the lover.
Someone that person that meets an untimely end.
But someone gets to be that princess.
Someone gets that "happily ever after."
One in a story forges ahead
with a chipper "the end" in the final chapter.
And to some, perhaps, this is good enough?
A small glimmer of hope that helps them to sleep.
Because if one it could be then perchance it is thee!
But the standards of entry are steep.
I already know that I’ll never qualify:
I don't measure up to the criteria offered.
As mentioned before, I'm not one to adore,
and so it seems I'm destined to remain a pauper.
But I won't sit back and just be a side character
(for the part of the lead I'm deemed unfit).
I refuse to bow down to the ideals that abound—
And if that makes me the villain? So be it.
I will wield my wicked power.
Set a curse across the land.
Have a vendetta against our hero
Because for their antics I will not stand.
And I know that this means that I'm destined to lose—
The villain rarely survives (except for a sequel).
And the protagonist will tell my story
And make my actions and choices seem evil.
Perhaps my ordeal will seem useless
since the morals of the winner will persist.
But just because it is a fight I cannot win,
Does not mean I shouldn't resist.
Because life is fairytale, sure,
but "happily ever after"s don't last as long as the name implies.
There are too many losers, too many misfits,
that the values of the protagonist leave behind.
So in this story I might be the bad guy.
But that's based on someone else's word.
And stories can change, lenses be rearranged,
and I'll fight until my story's heard.

Part I – 10039 330th Street West

I used to live in a haunted house.
Everything about the building felt wrong:
Creaking staircase,
Crumbling basement walls,
Dark side door,
Thin white curtain in the bathroom, which housed a clawfoot tub.

When I lived in the haunted house
I was a little girl, and I didn’t move until I started high school.
I hated my room,
I hated the dining room,
I hated the basement.
I never used the bathroom, which housed a clawfoot tub.

Bad things happened in the haunted house.
It didn’t matter what the time of day was.
Growling at night from the dining room,
Singing in the morning from the basement,
Tapping on the porch window at midday in the playroom.
Nobody checked if there was activity in the bathroom, which housed a clawfoot tub.

I know that the house was haunted
Because someone was always with me when these things happened.
My stepbrother who also heard the growling,
My stepsister who also heard the singing,
And all of us who heard the tapping.
I know that these happened
Because the house was haunted.


Part II – 13947 Gates Avenue

I used to live in a haunted house.
Everything about the building felt wrong:
My bad report cards in the recycling,
The constant panic in my stomach,
Piles of tissues on my bedroom floor,
My bedroom itself, where I constantly hid away.

When I lived in the haunted house
I was a teenager, and I didn’t move until after starting college.
I hated the living room,
I hated the kitchen,
I hated the hallway.
Most of all I hated my bedroom, where I constantly hid away.

Bad things happened in the haunted house.
It didn’t matter what the time of day was.
Whistling by the window at night from the wraparound porch,
Screaming outside during the day from the yard,
Voices whispering my name constantly from anywhere.
I was only safe in my bedroom, where I constantly hid away.

I can’t know that the house was haunted
Because nobody was with me when these things happened.
I was alone with the whistling,
I was alone with the screaming,
I was alone with the whispering.
I can’t know these happened
Because it’s my head that’s haunted.

Your brown eyes sear through the thick mud of your life.

You are like the eye of the storm--
Moving coolly over land and sea,
A rare phenomenon
Cloaked in terrifying walls of turbulence,

I love you.

It seems like everywhere you go,
A black cloud follows you
And the weather pelts your soul.

It seems like everywhere you go,
Beauty erupts like a slow-motion volcano,
And I'm the only one who sees it.

You sip your coffee on a ray of sunlight in the morning--
You are woven into it,
Your brown eyes are looking at me with their brows raised
Your stepsister's chickens are out back
And Daisy is trying to go outside so she can get another duckball treat

And I love you.

Oh my god,
I love you so much.