Mary Zartman

Still the Little Princess

If you turn your head away from the pain

you can count the things around you now

that are good, the things you trust

that are goodness.

You can count the smell of wood,

the cat that jumps up lightly

to look out a window,

the sound of toast being eaten,

a layer of woven blanket on your legs

as you sit, safe, reading under a lamp

a book someone else spent hours and hours,

years, lifetimes writing and rewriting.

The story is pouring forth

from the fairies in their brain

whispering words in the beeswax candlelight

hidden in their attic room, protected,

full of imagination.

Dreams flickering like ancient shadows 

on unfinished rafters, roofbeams 

with a few spider’s webs 

to catch the pests and bloodsucking bugs.

And then, when the story is finished,

when all the words are gone,

a promise of hot cocoa and bed.