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"Curse of the Firstborn" by Stephanie Parent

You were always reading stories

Of girls who did what you could not


The ones who searched for spindles, dug their

Flesh in and pierced their thumbs, emerged stronger

And bloodier and more beautiful and danced off to

New adventures, new desires while you


Lay on your childhood bed, half-asleep

Tired from homework and diets and

Exercise routines, flipping the pages of

A Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog


Knowing your parents were downstairs

In separate rooms, watching separate TVs

Guarding the home, guarding your dreams

So that your mind could not dare to clothe you


In the lacy lingerie; your mind couldn’t craft

You into something worthy of a different kind of

Attention, something more than grades and

Graduate schools, something you so desperately


Wanted to become, even if it meant possession

Even if it meant being awakened by a stranger’s

Touch, his tongue, but you would have had to take the

Step, had to touch the spindle and you were a


Firstborn, coddled and protected and

Imprisoned in a world of shouldn’ts and

Couldn’ts, so you shrank and slept and

Wandered enchanted castles in


Reveries: dungeons and towers

Beasts and princes, walls weeping moisture

On stone and balustrades blooming moon

Flowers; you, cursed to make beauty with


Your words when you wanted so much to

Be beautiful in your body, wanted so much

To be a youngest daughter fleeing through

The forest, lovely in her loose-limbed


Abandon, to be the creature each demon and

Every savior yearned to consume; but no

Adventurer came to the house your parents

Guarded, no one arrived to rescue or ravish you


So you slept and by the time you realized you could

Only wake yourself, the pearls of moonlight had faded


The sun was dull as an old spindle


Struggling to pierce through the clouds.




Stephanie Parent's poetry has been nominated for a Rhysling Award and Best of the Net. She loves myths and fairy tales, and she's written almost an entire book's worth of fairy tale-inspired poems.

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