Cinderella in Reverse

Cinderella in Reverse

The lights, the pageantry of NOLA on tap, the river bending and midnight rendering

The still of these streets in faint orange glow of Bevolo’s handy work flickering

The wharf mouse skittering across this deck to the canopy of metal heading east to the Westbank

The mirror of Cinderella in reverse reflects off these waters onto me

I could be her prince for one-hundred and sixty-eight hour intervals straddled

Between changes in custody and this Chevrolet pumpkin and this single man boppity-boops back into A single father stitching and sewing and sweeping and growing a head of household alone

The moon light is not so luminous when horse drawn carriages end the flicks

Of hoofs on cobblestone for homework folders and clicks of mouse movements

To Catholic school websites about first grade classroom activities and bake sales

Roles transposed and torn inside out and what was, is not and what will be won’t

And I can see the despair draw in like dew drops as morning approaches on the lawns of her irises

Covering up in a haze of all she wants me to be, but I can not

Like every sad-sack princess stereotype imbued into the proliferating consciousness

Of hypnotized Disney prepubescent American girls she clings to a failed reality

That her dashing-dancing regal prince would extend his hand to offer a better than

And alas these dominoes have fallen prior to our meeting,

I can not offer her a virgin crash-course in adulthood

I have seen the steps of the Notre Dame, wedding bands

And being torch-hunted like Quasimodo in Esmeralda’s stare

I have set my faith in a candle’s flame floating on a lotus in prayer to a vagabond God

And watched a hurricane flip the wax into this river’s bed

Collected and correcting, new attire and projecting a wish upon these waters

For a woman like her to be the Christ in my life

Yet knowing this tuxedo shirt, it hurts; the neck size is too small,

The glass button is popping the stitch; I can not breathe or be the man she needs

This one story house in this Maurepas mire, is no castle with staff

It is a family of one, of sometimes two, hoping to grow

I can see the lackluster grin and mixed anger at the anchors of why I must be here

In this swamp stuck in the mud settled in the wars of my own tribulations

Finally at peace and we meet and yet the logistics of these Halloween pumpkin coaches

Shattered glass footwear and the assumptions of gender emote a dichotomy between

Kisses like pixie dust dreams floating in the temporal nature of fantasy

And responsibility transposing the majesty of a mortgage and reading bedtime stories

Knowing no one knows the background to these tales except for me

Some ever-afters are better left un-read