Sleeping Beauty

The breeze drifts in across the drained swimming pool and ripples along the cracks of its tiled walls.
the after effect is noticed enough for shivers to form but doesn't linger into my toes

i sit there waiting for something to happen
for the tension to ebb away or perhaps for it to forget me

it doesn't of course,
and i hear the tick tock of the revolving hands that push me through the next set of open door ways
and close with a bullet prove pane behind me.
silently gliding shut as i watch it all with hot fingers pressed flat against its view. i wonder if it will ever feel the way it has,
the way it does now...
I'm scared it can't.

Thats the thing about breezes; easy to drift onto but not so easy to catch or stop.
i keep waiting now, keep counting and wringing my hands
and forgetting to do the normal things like tidy up or sit with people because detachment does that to you
stretching the stitches your mother gave you that hold you to her;
that thread they call a bond and the needle you were told knocked out a princess and an entire kingdom.

does that make me the princess now?
the lost sleeper who belongs to nothing anymore
just waiting for a prince to wake her up and tell her it'll be ok; that he'll look after her, that she can stay.


They never wrote fairytales about empty swimming pools.