Cinderella on a Bad Day

I sometimes wonder

What Cinderella must have been like

On a bad day,

When the weight of her slavery

All got too heavy.

I'm not so preoccupied

(As most people are)

With her running off with that prince

As a symbol of female dependency,

But rather the heroic nature

With which she kept her soul intact

In the face of vain cruelty,

And persevered until life yielded up

A kingdom.

But still,

I wonder what she must have been like

On those days

When the darkness seemed

Unending

The weight of a loveless life

Bearing down on her bones

Creaking and cracking under the pressure;

How she must have thought:

“This will never, ever

Get better.

This must be

My fate.

Might as well throw in the towel;

Leave the beds unmade,

The breakfast unprepared.

Let them scream, let them curse me

Let the garden go dry,

Leave the silver unpolished

The floor unmopped.

Let the dirt grow thick in the corners,

Don't feed the animals,

Let them starve and die and rot

Let the maggots eat their corpses

Let the moths eat the linen.

Let them rage down filthy halls

Let their hearts burst with indignation

Their shallow preoccupations

And erroneous judgments

Their faulty understanding,

Inability to see nuance,

Cheap assumptions;

Their hypocrite voices

And angry hypocrite eyes;

Might as well light a candle

And burn the whole fucking place down

With them inside

While I hitch a ride

Out of this God-forsaken town.”

I bet you anything,

That on her road to being queen

Cinderella had days

Like that.