BTT #45: Changeling

Changeling

Once, up on a shelf in my sister’s room on a slender stand of silver there was a round and shining mirror. With my sister gone to school and my mother napping in an empty afternoon, I quietly entered the brightness of the room.  The white canopied bed with rose covers curved and billowed in the center as the desk and two different dressers circled it with fluted legs and scrolling edges frilled with a feathering of golden shiny trim.  A small table surrounded by bears and ponies was set with saucers and cups, each one painted with a Dwarf or a Hunter or an Evil Queen.  But my finger still traces the one with the arbor of green framing the well where the girl with winter white skin and dark eyes cast her hopes into still and hidden waters.  She sang about a prince, but I see now that she simply missed her mother’s long and gentle arms of kindness wrapped around a lost and trembling heart.

The mirror, up and away from my small hands, reached to me. I moved a chair and climbed and took it down and held it as I sat slowly twirling on the dark mahogany stool with eagle claw legs.  I flipped the glass back and forth from close to far, but soon settled and batted my eyes at the reflection, where I saw the long dark eyelashes and sparkling smile of my mother, with my head tilted as she would do, unconcernedly off to one side.  Outside the door and past the large and cluttered playroom with the purple carpet and around the corner and down an unfinished hallway of laundry and mason jars and cement, was a room papered with cowboys and lariats and wild broncos bordering dark panels of powerful veneer.  It was any boy’s dream and it belonged to me, but still I sat twirling alone in my sister’s room; feeling like I belonged.

♥·

A heart danced lightly

Into the reddening woods.

Huntsman brings a box.

♥

• Lona Gynt, November, 2018

This is linked in response to dVerse Open Link Night, it is partially in response to Lillian’s prompt to write a poem that begins with the stock phrase “Once Upon a…  (anything but time).”  I missed the deadline for that link so I am doing this in Kim’s Open Link Night:

Here is the link to OLN (it is always a blast)

Open Link Night # 231

Here is the link to Lillian’s Prompt on the Stock Phrase “Once Upon a Time” where I missed the time 😉

Stock Phrases

But I am also doing a Two-fer.  This also fits Merril’s lovely Haibun Monday with the theme of transitions.  Here is the prompt there.

Haibun Monday: Transitions

©All Rights Reserved for Text to Lona Gynt, November 2018.

The images are from the site “Filmic Light”  here is a link:

http://filmic-light.blogspot.com/2017/04/23-piece-snow-white-tea-set-by-marx.html

These are photos I found there of the same tea-set type that my sister had – but still intact.  I don’t think hardly any pieces from her actual set remain.  We were a large group of kids that played with rather than museum pieced our toys.  Check out the saucer on the bottom left corner below.  As stated at Filmic Light:  “This blog is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company or any other corporate enterprise. It is an independent fan site dedicated to all things Snow White. All images are copyrighted by their respective copyright owners and are displayed only for historical, archival, and celebratory purposes.”

For a different take on mirrors, look into my vampire story in my previous post (ok, advertisement done now 💜)