Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time,

I used to dream in Storybook rhymes.

That told of a Prince that would come sweep me off my feet

He’d stand under my window and throw rocks for me.

But that’s just it, it was a childhood dream

Those thoughts and feelings are long gone

And just like chess, I became a pawn

In the game of loveless love my parents had played.

I was on the front lines and I suffered the pain.

The front lines: where their weapons were words;

Their words were filled with venom the players felt their opponent deserved

And I sat as a child and merely observed.

And through my sufferings I learned to deal,

By making a way that I would never need to heal.

Once upon a time,

I closed off this heart of mine,

When I learned that there’s no such thing as storybook love,

No such thing as the fairy tales I would dream of.

I kept it secure and in doing so I became distant and lost

But I did it so I would endure, I made a promise to myself, and on my heart I traced a cross.

But Once Upon a Time

I was a little girl

And I lived inside a Beautiful, Stained Glass World.

Once Upon a Time

My Parents were in love

They Lived A Happily Ever After

And said “I Do” under the church rafters

I believed in love at first sight,

Along with unicorns, and fairies and evil dragons in flight.

I remembered to always look for the silver line,

But that was only once upon a time…

Once upon a time, my parents faced a steep Incline with a cliff on their side,

They were ready to jump and forget about me, myself, and I.

If they had the love that I had learned of,

Why were they so ready to give up?

There was supposed to be a light at the end of the tunnel

But the dark just kept dragging on.

What was I supposed to do when they wouldn’t live as one?

And they would tell me that they were still in love?

I would learn to live with how my life became what it is today,

I thought the war had come to an end but I realized it still rages within,

Because even though it’s a few years later

I now see I’ve hit the iceberg, and like the Titanic I’ve sank into a frozen danger.

The waters froze my heart over leaving no room for the warmth and love of another.

This leaves me to wish I could return to my once upon a time,

Where everything around me was part of a soft lie

Leading me to believe that everyone’s life story started with the words “Once upon a time…”

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This piece shows creativity in that I relate the feelings a child experiences during a rough and choppy divorce between their parents which creates a custody battle over the child to common knowledge, games, and history which makes it less hard for the audience to sympathize with. I find it engaging in that it rhymes almost as if it is a twisted "storybook rhyme" and that, for this generation especially, it can be very easily related to the reader's life events if their parent had a divorce. This shows growth in that I hadn't written a poem before where I actually said what life event I was writing of; it's not hidden under a veil of ambiguity that is known as an allegory.