Once upon a time

a woman in a white room

that primal scream of want and terror

her cheaply dyed hair coils like a tangle of bright red rope

the need is a nasty physical clawing thing

the white robed paper faced figures around her deathbed 

needles and tubes 

they fed her desire one last time

as she lay gasping shallowly in her high

her face twisted in a crude caricature of a smile

no, she never thought of her baby, 

the child being born into the white world, even as his mother slips out

conceived by who knows who and who knows where, 

the child is nothing to her, 

she is an addict before she was a mother

she died in her own contemporary bliss

but how beautiful are his crystalline irises

he's awake,

but the monster of his mother's obssession has bled out of her and into him

he was born cursed,

with a want for something he could not understand

the white lab coats and the blue maked faces are monsters and ghouls in his imagination

he cries, but he is already broken, 

this tiny, sickly, doll-like child

Rapunzel.

...

4 white walls and an iron window

2 chained chairs and a metal sink

bedtime stories and bedtime examinations

needles and needles

sheets and tables

he always wears the same blue dress

they called it standerd issue

to him, it's cardboard tissue

but he's happy to listen to the songs sung by her

he calls her Mrs Wren,

but in secret, she's Nana

towers and princesses and fire spewing dragons,

he and Nana spun the tales like sparkling gold from straw as she braided his long silver hair

...

his first experience with death tasted like strawberries

it was the pink syrup the white lab coats ladled out like candy

Nana's hand shook as she gave him the cup

he gulped it down and asked for a story

but he only got tears instead

Nana was scaring him, and his head wnats to explode like a watermelon

he ran to his bedside and hit the big red button he was never supposed to push

the room was instantly filled with white lab coats like a flock of seagulls, sqwaking as him, at each other

but he couldn't hear, the white is slowly crumbling to grey

Nana never came again,

but the little boy understood

all the stories and the playtimes were fake,

he was alone,

because Nana was just another white robed monster

because nothing was ever real

Nana was gone, but she was never here

he's trapped in this white room forever

 

but if only Nana had known, 

that he was happy because of her

that he didn't mind living in the white room, because she was his color

that her sympathy to set him free from her imagined his entrapment was just her wishful thinking

that he was never trapped with her, but she with him

too late,

he's trapped in this white room forever

 

by the time he woke up 

the little boy had already lost his mind.

...

thirteen, and his silver hair has never been cut

no one else touched his hair but he and Nana

he can't have it

but he still didn't admit it

he's waiting for Nana to come back to brush it and braid it and tell him another story

he's beautifuly colorless

silver eyes, silver hair, silver lashes like a fan of snow

as if the moon had imagined him there

but beauty is sin,

beauty is pain, 

he never had the chance to learn.

late at night, the stranger slipped into his room

he couldn't recognize the stranger without the face mask and the white coat

no one heard him scream that night

...

morning comes

but Rapunzel never woke up

he slit his own wrists with a broken mirror

white and red, a field of lilies where roses had taken root

and thus end our tale of the modern Rapunzel,

his prince was a bastard, and his tower was neglect

he was broken from the beginning

but in the end, 

no one cared he was dead

...