coming from  a fairy tale

like those you cherish before

life smacks you in the head

Mine, housed in a little girl’s

happily ever after, stood the test

of time until it choked on stones

Its broken form lay shivering

one morning (after the storm)

I tried to comfort it, mend it

It was too late for fairy tales,

too late for happy endings

I tossed it into a dumpster

put a steel girdle around

my innocence and learned

how to keep walking away.

Dd. Spungin, author of the collection, Tomorrow Smells Invisible (Words With Wings Press, 2020) hosts events for Poets In Nassau and Performance Poets Association on Long Island. Her poetry can be found in anthologies and in print and on-line journals, most recently First Literary Review East, L I Quarterly, Poets To Come, The Avocet, Nassau County Poet Laureate Society Review, PPA Literary Review,  Corona, An Anthology of Poems, and Maintenant 15.