Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks.
A. E. Stallings
Glitter
by A. E. Stallings
All that will remain after an apocalypse is glitter. – British Vogue
You have a daughter now. it’s everywhere,
And often in the company of glue.
You can’t get rid of it. It’s in her hair:
A wink of pink, a glint of silver-blue.
It’s catching, like the chicken pox, or lice.
Its travels, like a planetary scar.
Sometimes its on your face, or you look twice
And glimpse, there on your arm, a single star.
You know it by a hand’s brushing your neck –
You blush – It’s not desire, not anymore –
Just someone’s urge to flick away the fleck
Of borrowed glamour from your collarbone –
The broken mirror Time will not restore,
The way your daughter marks you as her own.
The Pull Toy
by A. E. Stallings
You squeezed its leash in your fist,
It followed where you led:
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
Nodding its wooden head.
Wagging a tail on a spring,
Its wheels gearing lackety-clack,
Dogging your heels the length of the house,
Though you seldom glanced back.
It didn’t mind being dragged
When it toppled on its side
Scraping its coat of primary colors:
Love has no pride.
But now that you run and climb
And leap, it has no hope
Of keeping up, so it sits, hunched
At the end of its short rope
And dreams of a rummage sale
Where it’s snapped up for a song,
And of somebody—somebody just like you—
Stringing it along
Fourteen Lines 