Size / / /

When she was born

her parents both rejoiced

and sent the invitations

winging out to all but one,

and then they waited,

breathless, for her

tale to start.

She was a child then,

too young to care about

the crystal slippers,

or the potions that

they smeared into her

golden hair to make it

grow to tower length.

But some years later,

when she caught

her mother slipping peas

beneath her satin sheets,

and found her father

thrusting glowing blades

into a granite slab,

she swapped her fine

embroidered clothing

for the tatters of

a downstairs maid,

begged a tired nag from

a too-trusting stable hand

and slipped away.

Her life too short to waste

on other people's fantasies,

she went to find her own,

instead of waiting for

some random hero to

come riding through a

strictly scripted fairy tale.




Marcie Lynn Tentchoff is an Aurora Award-winning poet and writer who lives on the west coast of Canada with her family and various animals, both domesticated and not. Her work has appeared in such publications as Weird Tales, On Spec, Mythic Delirium, and Aeon. To contact the author, send her email at mtentchoff@dccnet.com.
Current Issue
4 Nov 2024

“Did you know,” the witch says, “that a witch has no heart of her own?”
Outsiders, Off-worlders {how quickly one carves out a corner of the cosmos, / claims a singular celestial body as [o u r s] in the scope of infinity}
Lunar enby folks across here
Wednesday: The 2024 Ignyte Award for Best Novel Shortlist, Part Two 
Friday: A Place Between Waking and Forgetting by Eugen Bacon 
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