Fairy Tale

   Oh baby, don't you know? I was never real. I don't exist. I am purely here for a short time before Wonderland takes me back. They rejected me, you see. They sent me to Sleeping Beauty's briar-ed palace, then to find Cinderella's glass slipper (she didn't want them because they cut her precious little feet), then off to the Seven Dwarves to cook and clean and dance for them. I've been wandering the Tales of the Fairies but, like me, they're not real either.
   I'm beginning to think that Wonderland kicked me out because the Looking Glass lied to me, I was Enchanted with it, and therefore foolish. They tricked me with promises that if I kissed the demanding, cold, croaking green creature, he'd turn into a prince. Oh , don't worry about me. I'll eventually find my way out of the Forest. They'll regret giving me the apple, threatening me with "fi-fi-foe-fum, I know the girl who's trying to run!", and pushing me to the wrong side of Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
   A monster transformed back into a handsome Homo sapiens, but his Beauty loved her wild, temperamental, unkempt, tender, sweet, dazzling Beast, not the aristocratic, groomed prince; he was a stranger. A little man spun gold and desire until dawn, until straw turned into shimmering, cold nothingness. The girl trapped in the tower lost her lover on his white steed and her stair of golden locks, forced to become a single teenage mother. I was bruised by a small pea, even through the hundred mattresses, but, honey, I'm no princess.
   I don't think they realized that, though. They treated me like a child in red, going to Grandma's, in danger of being seduced by a hungry-for-young-flesh, worldly, scheming wolf. Like the Damsel in Distress who ends up in peril at the hands of someone smarter than she (though not by much) and needs someone with a cape and a kingdom to come and spirit her away. I'll miss feeling like I matter in this lovely world, but I think they may need me in Wonderland. Or maybe I need them.
   I want to find my happily-ever-after. Where Evil Stepmothers just want a girl's night out; where Prince Charming comes fully equipped with a brain, beautiful hands, and a crazy sense of humor; where three men missing something (courage, a heart, a brain), a small black dog, and a little girl in a blue gingham dress and glittering footwear come to a fork in the Yellow Brick Road and decide to stay in Oz; where the twelve sisters ditch their Midnight Ball and find a night club where they can wear out their shoes dancing until sunrise, the air tasting of laurels and satin; and where Thumbelina the Fairy hooks up with a Napoleon complex-ed Tom Thumb and finds him too small.
   And where a girl realizes Wonderland isn't for her (not with its singing flowers and playing cards, mad tea parties, cakes and mushrooms and little bottles, disappearing cats with lecherous grins, a sadistic queen, and a schizophrenic white rabbit), meets herself and knows that she doesn't have to understand everything.
   She knows that whether she could feel the Pea or not, she's worth more than gold and jewels and kingdoms. She doesn't need to fall asleep for a hundred years or go on a quest to kill Dragons and Witches to show her that she's truly significant. She believes in "bibbidi-bobbidi-boo", magic carpets, the impossible being possible, and magical fantasies coming true. She wants to live in a happily-ever-after where she can make art and poetry and music and laughter and tears and friends and enemies and love. All she needs is herself, her words, and her dreams of Castles in the Sky.