After seven years of damp walls, entombed, no more food,
she and her servant knife their way through the stone tower.
Their first glance outside, a shock. All has changed.
The country’s burned and smashed, the banners rent.
No one alive in the castle or village, the farms just soot.
No alarms warned them: abandoned by her own father,
the king who walled his daughter up and forgot.
Eventually, the tale will be made right again.
A prince will fall in love with Maid Maleen, she will prosper
in her gold necklace and never want for food or home.
Rip out the last pages. There will be no wedding today.
The sulfurous fields don’t lead to paths or healing rivers.
Never safety again. Once the smoke’s in one’s lungs,
it remains forever. The charred trees. The murdered bodies.
from Harvard Review