Paper Crown

• Therese Horsfall, Grade 12
• Poetry
• 2015

A velveteen shabbiness, crumbling lacks,
Consumed by cleavering, festering shacks.
Black shiny bottles of happiness cracked
Empty, roll around cold.
Trimmed ribbons of dust revere a face,
With an amethyst bruise, trembling grace,
Grimy blonde hair, but gleefully placed,
Sits, throned, a crown of gold.
Giggling, lone, to mouldering walls.
“Prepare, gentle servants, a grand Royal Ball.
With joyful courtliness, deck this hall.
The clear-eyed Prince awaits”
From lice-ridden corner, a hurtling wrath,
Scything dreams, shaking cage of the broken-winged moth. Fluttering hands, Slack-mouthed froth,
Memory surges, and strikes.
Blue-eyed baby by dead bloody hand,
Silent back stairs washed clean by the sands
of Time. Now a prince in cracked Fairyland.
She wipes her face, and goes back to dream.