Once upon a Time...
Persecuted by those who would bang sense into you like a drum. And you, who would rather wear a necklace of your own flesh, baubles of blood like rubies, than a weighted ankh of opals, could tear every hair from your own head if only you could shatter a castle made of glass. Every footstep echoes. A raised voice twangs like a tap on a tuning fork. Ghostly hands keen out a last requiem on the rims of wine glasses; we sit like stone every night, hushed, kneeling on our own deathbed.
He touches you, fingers like trembling, lingering notes. But the sound is hollow as glass, which, like all illusions, must shatter.
His goodnight kisses are always a little too lively, for one on the verge of slumber. Unconscious desire tightening her like a bow string; fingers curling, toes twitching, hips rising. The silent incubus ravishes the maiden at night, with soft little mouthfuls like rain.
And in the daytime, a mesmerising prismatic house of rainbows, refracted a thousand times. Infinitely fragile. Infinitesimally pointless. Held up by a painted smile. Destroyed by an adolescent stamped foot. You would destroy it all, even if it cut you to ribbons.
Mostly, you are a docile little doll, gathering dust, watching the world roll by as you sit atop some high shelf, put away. But poison kisses have turned to ash in your mouth. You grit your teeth hard enough that your jaw aches. You ache for something; to inflict something, something between pain and pleasure, because in your opium-addicted bell-jar of a brain, the two have become muddled up. Your mind is a muddle. You are incoherent. You cannot think straight; straight think cannot you.
And at night, a star-studded sheath of sky, smearing across the glass, and you, waiting, deliriously, nodding off against a clockwork carousel as your thoughts go round and round. In a glass house, the ticking of a clock is a heavy drum beat that gets into the bones.
Like an addict building up an immunity, you've become immune to feeling. When he moves over you at night like a spider, crawling over your flesh, your flesh crawling, you feel empty, as though he's scooped out your insides like a silver pomegranate. Only hatred is left. Hatred, not like blazing fire, but cold, hard ice. You are too drugged, too dumb, to do anything, but your fingers clench, unclench, dreaming of soft throats and moist arteries. And every night, you open your eyes a fraction of an inch more, burning away the paralysis in your veins with an ice-cold burn.
Once upon a time, Sleeping Beauty slept in a glass palace with a false prince and much too forceful kisses. When you rise, like some terrible sea creature from the depths, you are no longer a maiden. You pay the price for daring not to be a damsel; a hundred years have passed; the magic knife has turned to rust on the ancient table. You are Medusa; everything you touch turns to stone.
We live in the 21st century. I was just trying to wake her up, isn't an excuse.