Tired Beauty

Context: This tale is centred around the topic of compound weather events like toxic waters, draughts, and earth quakes due to human behaviours.

Too tired to sleep
she keeps on moving.
Restless feet
tipping off-beat.
Always a little too late.
But she’s just too exhausted
to keep up the speed.

Tired beauty
- and where is that damn 13th witch
who promised her
100 years of sleep?

Sweat pearls
running down her different faces.
Melting down in places
where she’s supposed
to keep her cool.
Looking down
on the self-appointed ruler of this world,
she thinks
“What a fool
who calls himself king
and doesn’t do anything
to keep this place chill enough to stay.”

Tired beauty
and no good reason
to keep her from running away.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Dry lips.
Sun burning
down on her crown.
Glistering blisters.
Arid skin
cracking open.
All that she longs for
is a place to doze in the shades,
cascades of ice-cold drinks
and a fresh water kiss.
“Dude no!
Not another diamond mine
and please keep your toxics
out of my last drops of waters.”

Tired beauty
and no patience for this prince
who thinks he knows what’s best for her
when all she needs is rest.

Limbs shaking
trembling fatigue.
Earth quaking
dam breaking.
Impossible to hold it together.
She’s crumbling
stumbling
falling into pieces.
Her body hits the ground.
Tears of relief.
She lays her crown down.
Time to hit the hay
- and better don’t get in her way.

Tired beauty
sleeping at last,
tightly tucked in
under the shadows of her past.

Some people come
and make a rocket and go.
Some see her beauty and protect her sleep.
They stay.
They listen to her breathing, slow and deep.

They keep the 13th witch’s promise
of a hundred years of sleep.
They will see.
Some rose-coloured sproutsfinding their way through
a 100-years old piles of dried-out stone.

© cynje