Antoinette McCormick’s short stories and poems have appeared in Mad Scientist Journal, Vermont Literary Review, and Camel Saloon. She is currently pursuing her MFA in creative writing at National University.

Ever After
(a Paradelle)
By Antoinette McCormick

I remember the perfect symmetry of your foul poison.
I remember the perfect symmetry of your foul poison.
Red and heavy, always hanging on the lowest, blackened branch.
Red and heavy, always hanging on the lowest, blackened branch.
Lowest on the heavy, blackened branch, I remember, always
Perfect and poison, the foul symmetry of your hanging red.

Not a crystal casket, not a rhyming glass.
Not a crystal casket, not a rhyming glass.
The bed cold, the sheets peculiar.
The bed cold, the sheets peculiar.
Peculiar the glass casket, the cold sheets:
Not a rhyming  crystal, not a bed.

No kiss can mend a century of winter.
No kiss can mend a century of winter.
I escape this cage of bones to slay the princess.
I escape this cage of bones to slay the princess.

Heavy this casket of blackened bones.
Not a kiss and  not a bed: the perfect symmetry
Of the glass sheets, of the crystal cage no rhyming
Can escape–poison, princess. To mend
The foul century, I slay the winter. I remember
Hanging on your lowest branch, always cold, red, peculiar …