One-Line Fairy Tales

Photo by Amalia Sieber

♥ Those hot-chocolate winter nights were what drove us outside, beneath the canopy of rambling trees with branches so thick that the blanket of the stars and the sky was but an afterthought, and it was there that we found our miracles, our haven, our tiny dancing girls with fresh drew in their hair and our anima queens who wore paper doe masks and tiny silk dresses and our animus kings in thick arctic coats and combat boots and our dazzling reception of music and merriment and magic, and we held hands as we faced this brave new word, tiny unspoken questions still on our lips, and we watched as the sky lit up with things we could not understand but loved nonetheless, and when the howling of the wolves and music of the night finally faded into silence and the electric light of their hopes and dreams faded into a sweetly dim refection of the stars, only then did we go inside, dizzy and drunk with the magic of that winter night, wondering from behind sleepy lids if maybe it was just a great and curious dream.

♥ The music of the evening called out to me, like the sound of a tuning fork struck against a star, until I thought, while huddled over endless sheets of paper and ribbons of pre-soaked ink, that it would drive me mad, and so I gathered up my typewriter, in it's faded black case, and my thick corduroy hat and my stiff winter coat and my one-way train ticket meant for nowhere in particular and I left the house with all the doors still open, the lights turned on, the locks left at ease so, if they so pleased, the doors could swing open and they too could enjoy the night, and I thought nothing of cops or robbers or thieves, but only of the night and what it held, and so I walked down quiet streets, past bakeries that I had frequented, bookstores I had loitered in, coffee shops that I had spent hours inside of simply watching the sun rise and set, and I knew that I must leave them all behind, and so I walked until I reached the shore and, standing on the last plank of the only pier in sight, threw off my stiff winter coat, my corduroy hat, my train ticket all into the ocean, keeping only my typewriter, my closest friend, and together I knew we could make our own home somewhere here, somewhere in this crisp, velvet night.

♥ The boy and I, the boy who I knew but knew nothing about, we wandered those streets illuminated only by the moon and the stars and talked about movie stars and coffee shops and dreams that made us both wake in a sweat, and I told him how I dreamt of carousels and ferris wheels that electrified the night and he told me how he dreamt of car crashes and broken glass and flashing lights that lit up the sky in blues and reds, and together we shared slices of pizza and broken stories in pizzerias with no doors and I told him how he looked happy, flustered yet happy, and how his cheeks were tinted a Shirley Temple shade of pink, and we walked each other back down those quiet and swollen streets, our laughter and joy and attention caught only by the sound of breaking glass, and together we watched that tiny red car crash into a brick wall, breaking into tiny, sugary specs like a ten thousand volt supernova, and in our amazement, in our fright, I was the first to notice the wall itself, a towering brick thing, and how behind it a ferris wheel, bright as the sun, was turning round and round in quiet excitement, and so together we stood there, shaken by the curious awe of the world, taken aback by the strangeness of it all, and when the world quieted back down we turned our backs and, solemnly, he walked me back to my waking life.

Always,
Penelope ♥