HORROR Poem: After the Ball, by Cathy Cook

she left her shoes
gold lace, hand stitched,
velvet and pearls, smooth
under her calloused thumb
different from the coarse
clothes she cloaked
her scorched beauty in
from 5 to 17. Luxury shoes
left stuck in thorns and mud.

Bare feet are best for straddling
tree trunks. Arms grasped the vines
wormed around and through the trunk,
the parasitic plants layered over roots.
Moss rubbed her leg. She shoved
one foot up. Velvet soft moss clung
to her scraped knee, painted her red scab green
The full moon lit her hair,
luxurious curls like those golden shoes.

She offered her sorrow to the midnight.

Princes, balls, stepmothers, midnight clock hands speaking curfews,
it wasn’t for her.
Nothing had ever been for her.

The wind swayed, waltzed, 1-2-3 with the tree.
Tendrils of her gossamer hair wrapped the tree,
held it like the vines, delicate partner hand in branch,
vine over body over branch danced.
The moon was witness to her bone thin arms
flung open, embracing the night.
The bone thin tree arms echoed,
bejeweled vines like her freed hair.

She was a tree shadow
arms splayed, legs firm
around the trunk,
hair tumbled
heart tumbled
voice crumbled.

Fairy godmothers only grant wishes.
They don’t warn you about prince’s hands, and glances
parasitic fingers entwining, creeping, sneaking.

Cinderella climbed up that tree to jump,
but some wish in her heart had yet to be granted
and before she landed, before she left the tree’s embrace,
her arms stretched, bones grew thin, chest caved in
legs curled and curled into trunk, body folded into wood
puffy eyes became dark hoods, until they swirled
into whorls in the trunk, hair tumbled, tightened, curled
leafed out into the night, brand new golden hair vine
wrapped the body of the tree-woman-tree
—finer decoration than any velvet or lace.
Cinderella doesn’t live here anymore.

She is tree shadow.
Branch woman.
Bone-wood being