Holly Karapetkova

Only so much of the story is told

A girl is born. A girl is hunted. A girl escapes. A girl is wanted. Sometimes a wolf enters, sometimes a hare. There was a mother but she died. There was a mother but she was a witch. There was a mother but she was a dragon who breathed fire, who turned whole cities to ash. Somewhere a mirror hung on a wall, a huntsman rode through the woods. Somewhere a prince stood in the shadows, his face scrunched into a knot, waiting for the girl to die so he could fall in love. So he could save her. Then happiness would open its gaping jaws and swallow them whole.

The stepmother is always evil

Her rage is a furnace full of pitch. Her envy is the bottom of a millpond. She looks into the mirror and the mirror speaks. She slams the lid on one brother’s neck and turns the other into a bear. Her tasks are impossible to complete: find a carpet that soars through the sky; kill the giant whose castle rises above the sea. She is a golden bird who slips through your fingers. She is a demon disguised as a maiden. She will open your throat, grab whatever is inside of you and drag it out, and still you love her. You are desperate for her love and so you chase her into the deep woods, the dark cave, the house made of candy that no one ever leaves alive.

Humpty Dumpty

Who says what’s broken can’t be put together again? Send them back to their war, the king’s horses and king’s men who know nothing of doctoring eggs and call in the kitchen maids, who gather every last speck of shell carefully in their skirts. See how they match the edges with glue, see how the cracks disappear into the white surface, one small fissure turning up at the end–more of a smirk than a smile.

Cinderella-esque

Given the child-sized slipper, cold and hard as glass, I knew what to do. I sliced my big toe off with the carving knife, cut my heel at an angle, then shoved and tugged until everything was submerged. Once you are queen, said the voice in my head, you won’t need to go by foot. The pigeons cried out for blood, look in the shoe! and the footman gaped at my half-limp, my white stockings turning red. I kept on walking. Stare all you want, I told him. The shoe fits.

Little Boy Blue

What have his two eyes seen: thousands of miles of pasture, corn cut with sickles, bound into sheaves, year after year the same until blue is no longer a color, only a state of mind. Sometimes he is afraid of forgetting, all the pieces of his life blown so far apart only the ants will claim them. Sometimes he is terrified of remembering, a life full of sheep. The herd mentality never made sense enough to live by, though god knows he tried. Let him sleep, his name receding into sky, free of your blame. You don’t know him at all. You don’t even know his name.

Holly Karapetkova is Poet Laureate Emerita of Arlington, Virginia, and recipient of a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. She’s the author of two award-winning books, Towline from Cloudbank Books and Words We Might One Day Say from Washington Writers Publishing House.