Do you
remember the fairytale girl who found a way
to another land
through an enchanted well,
arriving
there behind our heroine and without grace,
without the
looks, the charm, the way with words;
and, doing
so, was covered in tar and feathers.
She stood, her hopes pooling about her feet, settling between her toes,
tar shoes
clicked her to the tar ground. The feathers tickled, then set.
The tar ran
long enough to reach every blessed crevice, every fold in her and
her dress,
her hair, her necklace kept for special occasions.
She set in
place, long, tear-filled hours of trying ran by,
her darkened eyes crowded with
her own hair, tar and feathers.
At home her sister sang
(she could
always sing, all birds and summer and golden times)
and set the table, dusted
the shining clock, watched gentled flowers through the glass
and wondered at
the light soaking into the tapestry.
Tar girl
moved slowly at last, feet slipping on cobbles, sticking every step, crying at
herself,
at the pain in her ankles from dragging up one foot, then the other,
each time fighting the tar
and the scorched, driven pain held at every tender
spot on her body.
The long way
home and her own front door,
greeted mid-song
by the golden child,
tar-free,
and smiling
the pitied welcome
for strange, lost souls.
Slouching in
our anti-hero makes her way across the old stone floor
to the water pump at the
kitchen door: drenched, tearless and set.
Later,
cutting herself out of her clothes, she studies her nakedness,
the light and
dark of tar and tar-free, the small, childlike angle
of her shaven head and the
pattern
left where the necklace faithfully stuck.
Light falls as the day dims
outside the window.
In the soft darkness she watches the way her raw, ripped skin glows,
where the
still-tarred makes her disappear against the room.
Lying back she traces the
sore threads around her neck and waits for morning.
In the other
room her sister sings softly in her bed. Tar girl turns to listen.
© Amanda J Harrington 2016
