ok it's not 55 words...

The mirror glowed, the mirror gleamed. The queen looked at her face and screamed. Wrinkles fine ran up and down, the smiling face now a frown. ‘I need blood’, she said, to put back that glow. ‘Find some silly maiden who spins, lock her in your room, and do what you do best; and please, not the skin white as snow type, you know what happened the last time’.

Bluebeard sighed. Maybe one day his story would be told.

You never asked
her
if she wanted to come
back
to walk again behind you,
following
like a faithful pup
the footfalls
up and down
rugged mountains
so that
your feet could crack and hands grow rough
and people could say:
‘Look it’s ORPHEUS,
who brought her back from the dead;
praise his love.
We saw his grief
tear at the earth
till it opened, bleeding'.

The other king,
and his dark kingdom,
lay wounded,
defenseless
so that, to heal,
he yielded.

but
you never did ask
her.

55 word story challenge: re-write a fairy tale or use fairytale elements to write a story in not more than 55 words:

Crunch crunch crunch. Baba Yaga was gnawing on a bone. ‘The problem with maidens is that they ask for too much’. ‘This one, for instance, asked me for a mirror’. ‘Now another one is asking me for a glass slipper’. Rumplestiltskin, her son, nodded wisely. He knew maidens and their demands only too well.

It does not seem fair
that the morning should come
with a yawning sun
shivering in the mist,
and everything is the same way as yesterday.

Yesterday when you ran up to me,
there was summer in every leap;
I burdened by woes, imagined and real,
could forget
and see just you, so happy, so alive.

Oh I know,
the flowers over your grave will burst one day
with blossoms;
each will be like a message from you,
telling me that this,
this is life; just one; just once.

And the sunshine on the petals will
touch me too,
and for just that one moment,
you will be here again
prancing, dancing, loving life
as I never can.

But right now,
it is not fair.
The sunshine and the birdsong
go on,
and I wait my dear cat
for you.

Eurydice to Orpheus

Eurydice does not speak to me easily. This is a work in progress.


I want to be here
The other life has blurred;
and though I can feel
the sting that runs like fire
through your fingers
burnt by stringed flames,
its winter here
and slowly, I am forgetting.
Sometimes when my
feet stir a memory
of blazing winter suns
deliciously burning my soles,
I remember
us
as I walk precipices
on midnight days.

Orpheus to Eurydice

On some days it's easier
When the winter sun
Allows for glimpses
Between the mists.
I wait,
And remember
Us,
Walking through these grasslands
You, me,
Dancing in the mist,
Seeking each other by touch.
Your fingers make
Music more haunting than
My calloused fingers have ever brought forth.
We would wait for the sun,
To break, to stumble through the mist,
Till it fell on our faces.
And when in the haze,
Your eyes, delighted,
Saw mine,
You would laugh,
And hide.
So I wait
Outside this cave, for you are hiding again,
I hear the echo of your footsteps,
Fading further and further away
To a place I cannot reach.
So I sing, I strum
Come now, they are gathering around,
Your birds and beasts.
Together, they and I,
Are waiting.

The Human Child.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you
can understand.
W.B Yeats.

They took the human child far, far away. He had followed them because they had baskets of berries with them; berries, red like the counting beads in his nursery; red like the rubies his mother wore; red like the apples he bit into as he watched autumn sunsets. They told him that he could have the berries if he came with them. They knew a place where there were thousands of berries. So he followed them.

Now he began to cry. Salty drops ran down his face. Laughing, they said that his tears would make a pearl necklace for their queen.

In the moonlight a mother looked for her child. Every rock took on the shape of the child and she would run towards it sometimes in fear, sometimes in joy, sometimes in tears. The white moon shone down on her, quietly, unfeelingly.

The wind rustled, someone giggled. Pale whispery hands gagged the human child. The mother turned. She knew her child was near. But all around her was barren, open rocky land. Hopelessness filled her and she fell.

The human child was taken deep into the earth. “Here he is”, they said. “We have brought you a human child”.

She was looking into a mirror. A barren world showed itself to her. She could see the mother standing against the hot uncaring wind and the blazing sun that had little else but her to burn. Her eyes looked straight out firm and determined. A shiver ran through the other world. She turned her eyes away from the mirror and held herself for warmth. For the first time she felt fear. ‘Cover the mirror’, she said and walked out.

'My son, have you seen my son?' the woman asked the boys who were playing near her house

'Have you seen my son?' she asked the boy who was chopping firewood.

'Have you seen my son' she asked the washer-man by the river.

'Have you seen my son?' she asked the three women who sat begging at the boundary of the village.

' Your son?' asked the oldest woman. 'She wants her son, did you hear that sisters?' she shrieked

'Have you seen my son, please, kind ladies?' said the mother.
to be continued.