Young Writers Society

I know I'm commenting again but I really LOVE these poems - I love the way you twist the well-known fairytales into something more chilling and darker, and I think it really strikes a chord in me.

:O Your poems are really descriptive! 'how to be a girl' and 'Peter Pan is at it again' are probably my top two favorites - I couldn't choose on one, haha. I'm looking forward to reading more!

So I'm behind on responding to comments, but I hope every person who left a comment or has liked or read my poems knows how much I appreciate it.


@Holysocks thank you so much for your wonderful comment. I'm so glad that you've been enjoying my poetry and that you find it thought provoking. <3 Those were two of my favorites as well. And How to be a girl turned out way darker than I anticipated but it's gotten such a positive reception at least.

@PrincessInk Thank you for the second comment! It's very much appreciated! And I was a little nervous about using a fairytale theme because I was afraid that it would seem overdone or juvenile even, but I'm glad I'm able that it's working. I really tried to subvert the tropes so I'm glad that it's striking a cord with you.

@Liberty Thank you so much for your comment! Peter Pan is at it again is probably my favorite too, probably out of all of these poems. But thank you so much for reading, and I'm hoping to have at least one more poem up tonight.

The Beast is angry again. Angry at Beauty. He has given her the best chambers in the castle, the best food, the best servants, the best attention. He has uplifted her from the ashes of a dirty peasant girl to a queen, given her phoenix wings, dressed her in fabrics that make silk seem like dishrags.

Yet he hears her weeping penetrate the castle walls, even on the other side of the palace. Everyday she wilts a little more, like the rose trapped under a glass dome. When he looks at it in disgust, and the bed of petals, each morning, he does not see the irony.

He does not understand that hearts wilt faster than flowers. He does not understand that pretty words cannot flower unless rooted in love. He does not understand love because no one can love the beast ravaging his chest.

He does not understand Beauty is a flower uprooted from her life, her home. He does not understand that she is dying of thirst. He does not understand how fast flowers shrivel to dust. He does not understand that he is killing her.

The Taming of Dorothy Gale's Heart

Dorothy Gale was born on the night a tornado ripped through her hometown in Kansas. She howled louder than the tornado, Aunt Em always told her. She wasn't born with a heart, Aunt Em always said. She was born with a storm howling in her chest.

The tornado came for her sixteen years later and whisked her to Oz, a glittering land that dazzled her and replaced her memories of corn fields and chickens. The Tin Man plucked her up, enchanted her with his stories, his silver tears that gleamed more than his cold silver skin. He baptized her in a sea of his tears that felt more cleansing than the smell of petrichor on the prairie before a good rainfall.

He cried more as he rusted. He felt empty, he told her, without a heart. The Wizard of Oz turned him away. So she gave him hers. Offered it up like the first flower in bloom. The Tin Man cried as she placed the heart in his hollow chest, but it was too much for him. It knocked on the cavernous walls of his chest, each beat echoing more than he could stand. It kept him up at night with its howling. He wasn't strong enough for a heart as stubborn and restless as Dorothy's.

He needed respite, so he ripped it out of his chest and tossed it into the sea where no one could find it. Only the roaring of the ocean could drown the noise of a heart that loud. The Tin Man then retreated to the woods where the talking trees stand vigil and keep him company.

But Dorothy isn't the same. And Dorothy now knows what it is like to feel empty, hollowed out like a pitted melon. She no longer falls asleep to the sound of a storm raging inside her. She misses its music, so everynight she stands outside by the shore. She hears the water crash against the earth, feels its furious pounding, tastes its salty bitterness. And somewhere, even though she can't see, she feels a phantom throbbing in her chest and knows it's her heart pulsing at the bottom of the sea.

she carries the future

Prince Charming has never been more happy, and Cinderella has never been more miserable. She carries the future within her, her ladies in waiting tell her admiringly, each morning, her corset stretches tighter over her ripening belly. But if this is the future, she longs for the past.

She longs for when she wasn’t a jewel wedged into a crown, on display. She longs for when her lungs took her fresh mountain air instead of stale palace air. She longs for when no one saw her. She longs for her disguise of ashes and cinders. She longs for respite from dull palace gossip. She longs for the hearthside because it feels warmer than the bed she shares with the prince. She longs for the nights when she could hear her thoughts burn with the stars instead of the prince’s snores. She longs for the nights when she could hear her thoughts burn with the stars.

She longs to have her head, her heart, and her body to herself. Now, the prince takes her every night. He is insatiable. He tells her she is more beautiful than ever before because what is more beautiful than a mother? What is more beautiful than a queen who has done her duty, given back to the kingdom by giving it an heir?

She is blossoming, flowering, he tells her each morning, as he fondles her belly, as if her womb was in a draught and he was the rain that would save her. He tells her she is blessed when she feels the child stir, like a wind rippling through a field. She hears the envy bleeding through his voice. There are some things she just can’t share with the prince and this makes him jealous.

He punishes her for this when he takes her more forcefully, when his hand on her stomach becomes heavier, like a shackle. As the child grows, so does her fear, and Charming’s. But she knows their fears are rooted in separate origins. Charming is King, and Kings don’t like to share. But somehow, it’s expected to be easy for Queens because nothing is off limits, not hearts, and certainly not bodies.

At night as the Prince snores, Cinderella clutches her belly. She feels the kicks like the jabbing of a sword, the piercing of a spear. They grow stronger each day like angry knocks on a door, demanding to be opened. What did she expect? This is the King’s son after all. And he won't be refused.

Wendy Darling Knows Things Now

Wendy Darling knows she is not a child
She suspects this when her feet kiss ground
and she is grateful for something stable and solid
after flying despite feeling like a half-sinking ship

Wendy Darling knows her thirst for adventure is quenched
When she wakes up in the middle of the night screaming
from the tangled collage of dreams of vengeful mermaids
and spiteful pixies and rivers of blood and boys who collect
grizzled hands like the way girls collect flowers for pressing

Wendy Darling knows her imagination has dimmed
when she can no longer animate her dolls with stories
when she has had her fill of stories and realized that
fairytales are better suited for the page than to live out

Wendy Darling knows, now, that even adults
get scared of the dark, of the slippery, wispy things
that elude you like boys who never grow up,
boys who come to your window at midnight star
boys who seek out the girls stricken with wanderlust,
the girls who can't say no to the boy with cartographer eyes
the boy who's heart is mapped with all the girls he's collected
over the years, like fireflies burning together in a jar

Wendy Darling knows a predator when she sees one
She knows that mermaids sink each other like stones
She knows that fairies draw blood more eagerly than sharks
She knows that even the youngest Lost Boys are old enough
to take up the sport of hunting girls under the guidance
of the boy who never grows up because the game is just too fun

Wendy Darling knows girls' bones are too heavy for flying
and pixie dust is a temporary solution at best and it is
better left to the boy who never wants to grow up
who's taken refuge in the clouds.Wendy's heart is
grounded in her chest now and she plans to guard
it more carefully when he comes to whisk her away
She doesn't believe in pixie dust any more
because she believes in herself and that's enough

I have absolutely adored reading your poetry so far this month. You are taking little pockets of female existence through fairytales and also through life and breathing life into them in a way we don't often see. The Cinderella one hit particularly hard, but my favourite lines are in your Dorothy Gale poem. These are stunning.

What I love so much about this thread is how you're taking seemingly innocent fairytales and offering a somewhat darker, albeit realistic, look at the lives and experiences of women generally. I think you really capture that in this stanza of the Wendy poem:

Wendy Darling knows her imagination has dimmed
when she can no longer animate her dolls with stories
when she has had her fill of stories and realized that
fairytales are better suited for the page than to live out

@StellaThomas Thanks so much for saying that and that means a lot coming from anyone, but especially a writer of your caliber! I'm glad to hear that my poems have been resonating. That's what I've really been trying to accomplish, especially with a lot of the things that women experience. And I totally agree about the Cinderella poem being hard hitting. I never even initially meant for it to take that turn when I was writing it; it definitely ended up being darker than I intended, but I'm still happy overall with the outcome. I'm even thinking about turning it into a story. At the very least, I'm considering writing some follow up poems. And if you have any suggestions for universal female experiences or characters or ideas that you'd love to see me do please let me know

@Lavvie Thanks so much! As I said previously with Stella, I really wanted to subvert fairytale themes and tropes as we know them and make it more applicable to the reality many women face. I don't think women in fairytales would be an exception to that kind of treatment.

I'm glad you've been enjoying it, and thank you so much to both you and StellaThomas for reading.

she splinters like ice

her heart burns in her chest like a coal in her chest, 
even after all these years for her Prince 
he is far from perfect, she can recall plenty of nights 
where she splintered under his temper like wood
cleaving asunder beneath the Woodcutter's ax blade 

Princes have a way of sheathing
ttheir dagger smiles behind perfect lips 
taming the wolf in their chests for a night,
and offering their hand at the ball when she stands
tucked into a corner of the room, timid, because she 
hasn't been snagged yet by a dance partner 

They know all the steps to a dance designed
solely to make a girl get swept off her feet
and into their arms because young girls’
hearts are the most fertile, they bloom
and flower with the slightest showering of praise

She knows how easily and tenderly love
Blossoms like tentative buds springing
From the earth for the first time, delicate
If she was spring then, tender and thawed,
As soft as a velvety rose petal, then she
is now Winter, hardened and glacial,
but still brittle, and when when he tries to
make her melt with his sun-laced smile,
she splinters like shards of ice

They tried to make her afraid of looming trees
and shadow-soaked woods with tangled bushes
of rose thorns sharp enough to draw blood,
but Red Riding Hood wasn’t scared of bleeding

She wasn’t scared of much actually, just boredom,
which frightened Granny. Red was jaded gray
with her sheltered village. She liked the expansive freedom
of the forest, getting lost in, because she found that she
always found herself whenever she strayed from
the worn path her mother and Granny tried to steer her on.

She met the Wolf and the Woodcutter by veering off
the path. The Wolf flashed his teeth at her and she
smiled back, marveled at the Woodcutter’s ax.
Red tried it on for size, brandished it like the sword
she was told was too heavy for such dainty hands

Perhaps curiosity did get the better of her
when the Wolf swallowed her whole, right
as she was distracted by the gleam
of a weapon deemed too formidable for a girl
with only a cloak and basket of bread.

But she did not cower, not at the bite
of the blade or when the Wolf devoured
her whole. She wasn’t scared, not when
she held the ax with more confidence
than the Wood utter twice her age
and twice her size, not when she’d spent
fourteen summers navigating girlhood
and other territories darker
and deeper than the inside of a wolf.

She knew she would find her way out
and she did, her cloak stained
red with the Wolf’s blood.

ahhh this last one is SO SO good. It's so amazing I don't know what else to say <3

To basically say what everybody is thinking, you are amazing! Your poetry is absolutely incredible and unique! My favorite so far is even princes can be gilded (and so can their hearts)! Have a great rest of NaPo! ~Lucy

@LZPianoGirl Thank you so much for your kind words Lucy! It means a lot to have you read and comment on my poetry. I'm glad you're liking it so far!

@PrincessInk Thank you so much for taking the time this month to read my poetry and comment on it again! <3 I'm glad you enjoyed my last poem.