Her Glass Slipper is Her Freedom

Cinderella fit the shoe

perfect-porcelain white-lotus-petal feet

slipping ever so gently into delicate glass slippers

apparently made just for her

by the handsome prince (he has no name)

who whisks her away at the stroke of midnight 

into the sunset.

That is where the story ends.

What about after ever after?

What if her beloved prince (he has no name)

decides suddenly she's too ready for work, too shaped by the cleaning she did every day?

What if she's so much unlike her perfect-porcelain white-lotus-petal feet

claim to fame

that he smashes the slippers against his jeweled bedroom wall?

What if she leaves him,

her honor disgraced for the whole kingdom to see,

and begins a new life?

What if she builds her own cottage,

marries a poor but wonderful young carpenter,

starts her own family?

What if he seeks her out

through the countryside

searching incessantly for the same girl

he searched for only a few years earlier?

(Only this time, he's going to take those slippers back.)

What

         if

           she

                doesn't

                            care?

Her real glass slippers are her freedom,

her lovely new life that shines like a thousand diamonds,

her tiny daughter who will grow up with the same freedom.

Although she is a woman at a time of sexism,

she has her real glass slippers in hand

and that prince-who-has-no-name

is gonna get smacked in the face with the heels.