One time
We liked stories, truth be told.
Stories about us, about our stories...
And there were so many stories still to be told
in every narrow nook and at the basin of every crevice
Lie motive inside metallic locks, under Persian rugs, in-
between sheetrock walls-
And above all
shapeshifting cumulous clouds-
faces.
There were too many to notice such
sweeping similarities so we let them be
Different, like wings.
One time these stories
entertained us with fancy, charmed us
in emulating everyday escapades.
We recognized someone’s doomed desires
before the ending, catching on,
like memory and water,
taking its sweet time
reflecting.
One time
We told stories to each other
of the way it was, of the way it will be-
Presenting only the preferred possibilities,
such as happy endings for the good guy or our hero's.
One time we wrote stories
because we could make it up,
narrating truths seamlessly
into lovely little lives, dressed ghosts under bleached pulp with black eye liner-
awaiting a familiar revival in mirrored eyes.
The stories one time
saved us from the villains, by showing us
what they look like
as potential suspects-
This way,
we don't step in glass
or cast more curses upon
one fairys' long, winding tail.
Painting By George Inness (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
