I worry the poison apple will reject me

Peel and pips flee from my fingers

Like pomegranate seeds from a pretender Persephone

I will not prove the prettiest, not truly

And she'll traipse off to poison someone else

 

I've really been looking forward to the glass coffin in the woods

To get some sleep for once

And not have to worry about what I look like

Or what other people look like

Or how clean the manor is

 

There are rooms for seven people in the manor

Relatives not in the running for prettiest compete, connive, caress,

Whatever it takes to get themselves a room here

They crave the distance from the court

Rooms for seven, and a closet large enough for one beautiful maid

 

Of course I'm this beautiful

I've been sculpted to be nothing else

I keep the alchemists in business the same as everyone

My potions and powders barely fit in this closet of mine

But if I'm not prettiest, the latest glass coffin will enshroud someone else

 

They keep playing us against one another

And we never learn

At least never enough to get past the specter of supposed ugliness

My stepmother herself came out of a coffin five years ago

Just before she married my father

 

The poison apples come from that grove

In the shade of the alchemists' workshop

My eventual rescuer need but purchase the antidote

Apply the expensive unguent to his lips

Then smash them against mine

 

Without asking my permission, the antidote will reach my heart

Shocking me awake

He'll carry me to hide that I am too weak to walk

Too weak to run away

And then I'll be a queen, and only useful for my jealousy

 

So before all of that

I hope I am the prettiest

Accepted by the poison apple

For I would like to rest

At least a while