Faerie Tales

I want fairy tales where princesses become their own dragons.

Where scales hide, slick and iridescent under parchment thin skin,

monsters in plain sight.

I want an Alice so high she sees her blood as poetry.

Lovely and thick and able to fill the bath tub four times before she passes out.

Mouth slack, hair askew, ecstasy written in every line of her broken dolls body.

I want a little mermaid who is small in size but huge in hunger,

who sees a prince and wants him so much that when he rejects her

she drags him into the sea.

Drinks his last breaths down, greedy in the way only little girls are,

and keeps him, rotting and waterlogged,

forever.

I want a Snow White who didn’t ask to be pretty.

For her face to earn her the hatred of a queen,

or unblemished skin the love of a man she never wanted.

I want a girl filled with fire and the weight of a destiny

that would train her to perfect silence.

When she bites into the apple, the heart of a poisonous tree,