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Freud's Fairytales
by Meggie Royer Gretel drinks seven beers a day, smokes packs of Pall Malls down to the nub, Eve remakes herself from memory, from coffee mug circle stains and Oklahoma, and Adam stops writing love letters to his missing rib. Joan of Arc swallows the fire that was meant to burn her alive. Beauty decides she doesn’t need the Beast. The blooming of salmon in my uncle’s hands as he slices their bellies open sideways with a pocketknife, ghosts of blood crescendoing across the cutting board. Rapunzel lets her hair back up into the tower to prevent the prince from climbing in. The gutting of my mother like a fish, lying open and gasping on somebody’s frameless bed, taking a beating again and again. Scheherazade kills the king and escapes, never to be seen thereafter. My mother decides to leave the man who tore out her spine, moves to a state far away where he can never stumble through the door after five too many beers. But like all good stories, this one is fiction. |
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