The Lowest Kind of Fable

by Lynne Sargent

Some days you wish to prick your finger,

eat the apple,

let someone else tie your corset,

collapse.

Give your body permission

to succumb

when rest & sustenance & the will

to go onwards are so tragically out of reach,

that the curse seems a better option.

Make your body and its needs,

alongside the laundry and the washing up

into someone else’s problem.

Make the ones who find your body

have the same no-choice

but to care that you did.

Perhaps that’s why we call these things,

these desperate cries for help

the melodrama of princesses,

the lowest kind of fable.