When the Honeymoon is Over

Do you find yourself tossing and turning beside your beloved,
uncomfortable in satin and goose down, longing for your hearth bed?
Do you miss your step-family- wicked, but familiar?
Knowing that when you rose, every waking hour would be filled
with exhausting purpose, but with purpose nonetheless.

Do you know what to do with these wardrobes,
overflowing with silk gowns, with heaps of jewels and crowns,
and dozens of shoes that could never make you forget
the night of the glass pair? Do the ladies of court shun you,
make fun of you, the poser, the cinder-girl upstart?

Even the servants snigger behind their white gloves,
that time you used the wrong fork, or got down on your knees
to mop up your own spill, calling attention to your red and callused hands,
or didn't know what the bidet was for. No allies here,
except perhaps your royal husband, who loves you,

yes, but has never slept in a chimney corner. You wonder,
who was the cruel one, after all-your old family, your new one,
or the fairy godmother who came and upended everything?
(The fae's gifts are always sly and backhanded, didn't you know?)
It will take years of therapy, both couples' and solo,

to undo the trauma, to traverse the distance between your world and his.
Years of support groups and wellness retreats to figure out
your new place in all this, and probably a stint in rehab.
I want to tell you that true love conquers all, but does it?
What will your coping mechanism be, I wonder,

what will be your poison? Will you be the sort of princess
who likes to slum it, donning peasant rags and drinking
in the seediest dive bars, never letting yourself forget that you're still
a pumpkin underneath? You ask your driver to take a detour
to the old neighborhood, visit Daddy's grave,

park outside the house where you grew up and stare at its walls.
Throw a bottle at the old broad's window and take off
before someone calls the cops. Or, would you rather try
to become one of them? Take lessons in dance and etiquette,
train that voice into something more refined, leaving behind

the raw, pure songs that carried you through some seriously dark times,
and take up a proper feminine instrument, like the harp?
Do you dedicate yourself to causes? Befriend the palace mice and pigeons,
and open the kingdom's first animal shelter? Volunteer at a soup kitchen?
Or just give him an heir because motherhood is not only expected,

but something you can pour your identity into?
Do you become the power behind the throne,
Lady Macbeth in a starry gown,
Iselin nurturing a future Manchurian Candidate?
As many possibilities, my dear, as you have names,

Aschenputtel, Cendrillon, Sister Woodencloak, the Rough-Faced Girl,
or maybe you'll be one of those bored housewives
who drowns her sorrows in affairs with blue-collar guys:
the footman, the guard, your tennis coach, the pool boy.
You have so much to make up for,

so much you think you need to be punished for,
still marking your face with ashes. Explore your bi-curiosity
with the scullions, whose smudged aprons smell like home,
find a dungeon where you can work out your bondage fantasies,
where you can put on a maid's costume, and be able to say again,

Yes, Mistress. Was this the wish your heart made, that heavy clinker
sitting cold inside your chest? Or are we all just underestimating you again?
You've been raked across the coals, walked barefoot over the smolders.
You've taken enough heat, it's time to dish it out. Lay the kindling,
strike a match, and burn the motherfucker down.

Lauren Scharhag (she/her) is an award-winning author of fiction and poetry, and a senior editor at Gleam. Her latest poetry collection, Midnight Glossolalia (with Scott Ferry and Lillian Necakov), is now available from Meat for Tea Press. She lives in Kansas City, MO. https://linktr.ee/laurenscharhag

Find more by Lauren Scharhag in the Author Index.