The Life Cycle of a Fairy Tale Princess
by Sandra L. Faulkner
-after The Ferryman’s Yard (1977) by Leonor Fini
You swim in an umbilical pool filled with lily pads and the bones of cast-off princesses. Your friend touches a lily pad with the tip of her finger as if it were a test, but the answer is always somewhere just past the horizon. You rearrange the furniture in your mind hoping for a change, willing eternity to stop. But there you are gasping for air, and the ferryman always crashes your boat the moment you find a path. You weave wreaths of jelly fish in your hair, imagine the sting of tentacles to be the ethereal silk of a veil, the caress of some prince who will leave you the moment your hair turns white with the effort of saving yourself.
Sandra L. Faulkner is Professor of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University where she writes, teaches, and researches about close relationships. Faulkner lives with her partner, their warrior girl, and three rescue mutts. Faulkner’s poetry appears in places like Writer’s Resist, Literary Mama, Ithaca Lit, and Gulf Stream. https://www.sandrafaulkner.online/