Nothing Broken
Something was always crooked, off-true,
I’d cut out across town in rain
that never got through, but weighed me down.
There was always a glass slipper I couldn’t fill;
cold floors beneath stockinged feet,
lifeless layers of damp peeled off
for evenings filled with forbidden faces,
eyes the colour of make-believe –
touch, the static brush of fairy dust
and the white queen of my reflection,
blemished by a distance only ever halved.
Staring out from this happily-ever-after
I’d succumb to the chromatic scale of evening;
starless, moonless; leaking sighs
and ever so slightly descending.
Igniting it all in sleep, I’d choke and burn
then wake to find
nothing was really broken.
Julia Stothard is a data report writer & analyst working for an FE college in Surrey. Her poems have appeared in iota, South, Orbis, Weyfarers and IS&T. She posts micropoetry @TerzaVerse on Twitter.