Cinderella: A Re-Imagining

I am made of gossamer

and powdered blue,

blown easily as

glass in heat.

My feet ache, but they’re

still light as porcelain.

It’s better than

eating ash

and choking on

maggoted bread,

water gone gray

with spores.

Now, I eat orange cakes

with cream dollops

and lay on silk sheets to

wait for his scent:

game and smoke and blood.

I think of my sisters

with their

bloody stumps and

beak-torn sockets.

His hand strokes the arch of

my foot as he talks of

princely sport and I

eat and eat of him.