I didn’t know

I didn’t know this was the tower
until high school.
My second-story room wasn’t anything
made of old stone, spiresscraping the sky.
It wasn’t encased in twisting branches of ivy,
interior small and suffocating.

Sure, it had been lonelier since
my sister left, but
it still used to feel like home.
Now, I feel
restless
here.

-

I didn’t know she was the witch
until high school, either.
At first, I didn’t know there’d be
a witch at all.

In toddler years, in middle school years,
she was nothing like you’d expect
a witch to be.

Her curved smile as she hands me
the glass of lemonade, hands wet.
The smell of her perfume
spilled over bathroom tiles.
Her fingers pinching my cheek
as she reminds me to sit straight.

If anyone had called her a witch
back then, I would’ve cried.

-

Likewise, I didn’t know she was the prince
until high school, when
we were lying on her living room floor,
splitting a pouch of skittles.

She tastes like artificial fruit flavoring,
like bursts of color and sugar.
When she smiles, lips pink and front tooth
slightly crooked, she looks like
the best days of summer.

She’s not prince-like, really, in any way
except for this:

When the witch sees us in my tower,
fingers clasped together, laughing
softly with our foreheads pressed together,
all hell breaks loose.

“She is never coming back here,” says the witch,
and she locks me in my tower
and throws away the key.

“You were never any daughter of mine.”

I think she, of all people, would’ve preferred
a real prince, instead.

Still, in this story, the ending continues, even
past these stretching tower walls.

When one day I leave this place -
the witch that I still love,
the tower I call my home -  
I might finally be able to reach
the happily ever after that
lay so far beyond my bedroom window.