Fractured Fairytale

She breaks again and again

There’s been so much

Love gone wrong

To look at her

Is to see through

To transparency

That’s the goal, isn’t it?

Who’s to know 

Who’s to care

Either way…she’s broken

Not like Humpty Dumpty

No King’s horses

No King’s men

Can put her back

Together again

There’s no fairy godmother

Or knight in shining armor

Who can save her 

From herself

There is no prince 

Who can love all her pieces

She is only…

A fractured fairytale

With verbs, nouns, pronouns,

Adjectives, adverbs, prepositions

Conjunctions and interjections

Parts of speech

Leaving empty blanks

In her madlib life

She plays no role 

Of a sleeping princess

Waiting for love’s first kiss

Or the damsel in distress

There’s none to damn her

Like the evil stepmother

Or the wicked witch

To think of superlatives

Well, she isn’t the fairest 

In the land

Her life’s story 

Is a fractured fairytale

All she has to do 

Is fill in the blanks

If she wants to be creative

She just might change

How it will end.

© 2010 Salem Islas-Madlo

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” 

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet