Poem | A Red fairytale

Maybe we tell stories, we hurt our own.

Fabrications of lives yet to be born

Maybe the truth is just too plain to see

So tell me a story, and a story we will be.

So there was this glass palace and there lived so true

A king and a queen, a courtier or two.

They spent their hours playing peaceful croquet

Their nights they spent dancing, romancing till day.

Their kingdom outside the glass palace was dark

while they sipped their wine surrounded by sky tinted glass.

Looking in from the outside all you ever saw

Was a reflection of blue all over palace walls.

Till one day a man he came plodding by

Famished, fatigued, what with the kingdom so

He saw the glass palace, himself in it too

and wondered why,

Then realized it was a reflection he saw.

That all was not as clear as one would have thought

He took a rock and shattered the glass,

Small pieces flew at him

that shattered his dream,

For in there he saw not the greyness outside

Felt not the blistering sun,

but a cool summer breeze.

Is that now what we see happening to us?

One day a man will walk in and shatter our glass

And then he will see that his world is unfair

And want what is his, a bloody rightful share.

He will take up his arms and what will we do

We will act as the victims, our courtiers will too

There will be red running all over the floor

And screams will pierce like arrows through palace doors

And there are those who will start to think

That had we been fair, we would have not reached the brink

That had we been kind we would have not seen red

That had we been wise, would we have been spared?

And from this the passion of justice arises

They orate from their hearts of goodness and change

They reve up the movement, and take hold of the masses

And then build another glass palace all over again.

Reshma Krishnan