Princess Alexandra and the Glass Piano
I was a child when I swallowed the piano.
My jaw unhinged and down it slid: keys, strings, pins.
A dream, I imagined, until a crunch punctuated my footsteps
and hammers chinked holes in my thoughts.
Rules to live by when glass underlays your skin:
glide like moonlight, your movements unperceived.
Then halve your speed. Position each foot with care.
Wrap yourself in air. Shun stairs.
If interior music sounds, stand still for hours,
taking very small breaths.
Each night, catastrophic variations unfold.
A wrinkled rug. A fall. A name, abruptly called.
Fracture: cacophony: shatter, crash, chime:
a hailstorm of splinters: my bloody demise.
No prince for me. My ivory is not for playing.
Swathed in white, I snail the floor
as I haunt the halls and corridors:
a wrapper for shrapnel; an unwritten score
Lucy Dixcart lives in rural Kent. Her poems have appeared in Acumen, Eye Flash Poetry and Riggwelter, as well as in Pale Fire, an anthology by The Frogmore Press. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University.