Rapunzel, Rapunzel
Page 2
You made me believe
That it could be safe.
(I will always be grateful.)
You saw me.
Me.
You taught me
That I could shine.
That I didn’t need to be Rapunzel
Forever.
But I never needed you
To teach me how to climb down.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Stop hiding away.
Phoebe, Phoebe,
Shine brightly and strong.
Once upon a time there was a tower.
It was a tall tower with a single window,
High in the air.
Much higher than most people
Care to look.
Light shone from the window,
Sometimes sun-fierce bright,
Sometimes moon-gentle dark,
Sometimes extinguished.
In the tower lived a girl.
Her name is still Phoebe.
Rapunzel.
Not Rapunzel anymore.
(Well, maybe sometimes.
Often.)
Rapunzel is safe. Rapunzel is hidden.
Rapunzel is the shadow shield,
The curtains, the blinds, the shutters.
Rapunzel is tempting.
Rapunzel is cruel.
Phoebe struggles with her light.
Phoebe shines as brightly as she dares.
Phoebe, Phoebe,
Shine brightly and strong.
Phoebe doesn’t know how.
She has forgotten.
In the dank and murky depths of the past
Phoebe has forgotten.
Such a pity.
Such a shame.
Phoebe, Phoebe,
Shine brightly and strong.
Phoebe is Rapunzel now.
Rapunzel is her own witch,
Keeps herself in her tower.
There are bears out there.
There are wolves out there.
There are witches out there.
Rapunzel does not try
To be cruel to herself.
She just… forgets
That she is Phoebe.
Phoebe trusts her tower.
She darts out.
She darts in.
Dashes up the stairs,
Rapunzel throwing doors and locks
Behind her.
Sends bricks to hide the entrance.
Rapunzel’s prince long gone,
Too focused on the window
To notice the hints of well-hidden doors.
Too hoarse with shouting,
To seek for guarded passages.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel…
Did he ever know my name was Phoebe?
Did Phoebe ever see the prince?
It is a long way down.
A long way up.
And communication
Takes more than one person.
Phoebe doesn’t know.
Rapunzel hides away.
Phoebe does not dare
Shine outside her tower.
(She doesn’t trust the wild.)
Perhaps that is why her prince has gone.
(Does it matter?)
Phoebe, Phoebe,
Shine brightly.
Phoebe, Phoebe,
Shine strong.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel.
Be free, my Rapunzel.
Phoebe doesn’t shine
Outside her tower.
She doesn’t know how.
The wild catches on her clothes,
Snatches in her hair,
Ensnares her limbs
And trips her into thorns,
Down slopes, through streams.
Phoebe, Phoebe.
Hold on, Phoebe, be strong.
(It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.)
Phoebe is adding another floor,
To her high tower.
The glass sends light and rainbows
In all directions as Rapunzel places
The panes artistically into the design.
A lighthouse in the forest.
(Does a forest need a lighthouse?)
A clearing all around it.
The lighthouse isn’t done yet.
Construction is slow, tentative,
Reserved for when Phoebe shines.
Sun-fierce bright.
Moon-gentle dark.
(Will it work?)
Phoebe, oh, Phoebe.
Your light in the shadows.
Phoebe, oh, Phoebe.
Why hide in your tower?
Glass is fragile,
Even so high up.
But if you shine brightly,
And if you feel safe.
The monsters won’t come near
The lighthouse in the forest
Where Rapunzel dwells.
And if you look upward
And if you look down.
You might see the secrets,
Of the lighthouse in the forest
Where Rapunzel once dwelt.
And if you climb vines
And if you take care.
You might meet Rapunzel
In the lighthouse in the forest
When she’s let down her hair.
Phoebe, oh, Phoebe,
Keep building that room.
Phoebe, oh, Phoebe,
Dart outside and in.
Phoebe, oh, Phoebe,
There’s good in the wilds.
Nothing to haunt you,
Nothing to hunt you.
Phoebe, oh, Phoebe,
There’s flowers outside.
Phoebe, oh, Phoebe,
Come meet the mice.
Phoebe, oh, Phoebe,
The deer want to play.
Phoebe, oh, Phoebe,
Hear the birds sing.
Phoebe, oh, Phoebe,
Rapunzel so bright.
Phoebe’s shy and she’s frightened,
But she tries her best.
She comes from her tower,
Moon-gentle dark.
Sun-fierce bright
She shines from her tower.
Phoebe, Phoebe,
Such a long way to go.
Phoebe, Phoebe,
On her way home.
The tower is safety
With its high smooth walls.
There are no doors, no ladders,
No ivy growing around the base.
Phoebe lives in her tower,
Squirrelled away like winter treasure.
(Who am I?)
Rapunzel greets the visitors
In her clearing.
Dazzling below her tower.
(Can you see the tiny cracks?
Can you?
Can you see the fault lines?)
Rapunzel dances and sings.
No one knows how she enters the tower.
No one knows how she gets
To the chamber flooding the forest with light.
(I know.
Only Rapunzel ever knows.)
Phoebe hides behind Rapunzel.
She doesn’t venture out without her mask.
(Everyone who knows her leaves.)
Phoebe looks down on the people
Who want to visit her, watch her shine,
And all she can do is hide further away.
(Why shine, after all?
It’s Rapunzel they want to see.)
No one but Phoebe enters the tower.
Rapunzel weeps, trying to build her tower.
(Lonely.
So lonely.
Lonely.
Alone.)
Phoebe thinks of the prince
And wonders.
(And weeps.)
What did she miss,
Did Rapunzel?
(My fault.)
What did she miss,
Did Phoebe?
(My fault.)
Where are you?
How are you?
Love, it seems,
; Cannot fix everything,
After all.
Yet Phoebe believes.
(Not by choice.)
Phoebe misses the prince,
Half-tamed from the forest.
(Miles away now.)
She stays in her tower,
Half-wild from the forest.
(It isn’t all monster.)
She hides in her tower,
Lets Rapunzel shine bright.
(But you can never be sure.)
Why bother?
Why bother with shining
When there’s no one to share?
Rapunzel laughs brightly.
Gentle Rapunzel.
Kind Rapunzel.
Sweet Rapunzel.
Rapunzel is a mask.
Phoebe weeps.
She looks over her tower.
There’s the door.
There’s the ladder.
(Did I forget to throw it down?)
Perhaps the prince needed glasses,
Or suffered from vertigo.
(Did I ever ask?)
Perhaps he couldn’t climb.
(Could I have come down further?)
She weeps.
The story says Rapunzel
Travelled miles and miles to find
Her prince, lost in a desert.
I don’t believe
In stories now.
Blinded by the witch,
It was her voice that he recognised.
Rapunzel,
My Rapunzel.
Rapunzel cried and true love
Healed all ills.
It doesn’t.
And what if you’re
The witch and princess both?
Phoebe doesn’t dare
Look for the prince.
The forest’s too wild
And she only alone,
Small and ignorant.
Phoebe sits in her tower.
She goes up to her glass-room
And tries to shine her brightest.
But.
Shining is for Rapunzel now.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair.
She doesn’t
Want to
Believe anymore.
Phoebe, Phoebe.
Go away.
Phoebe looks out of the windows
Of her safe, quiet tower
And tries to bathe the forest
In light.
She dreams of coming out
Into the clearing
And dancing through the forest
In summer.
But she dances most in winter
When the clearing is quiet
And she is, almost, alone.
Shining for yourself
Is hard.
I don’t know how.
Phoebe has been Rapunzel
Most days of her life.
Phoebe is still Rapunzel,
Princess and witch,
Witch and princess.
Phoebe, Phoebe,
Shine brightly.
I try.
What else can I do?
Phoebe, Phoebe,
Shine strongly.
Can you see me?
Phoebe never blazes.
Not like when she was a child,
Before the world locked her
In a tower.
She’s made the tower her own,
But she’s still bound to it.
Perhaps forever.
Phoebe glows,
Dimly, but all the same.
Glowing too
Is light.
Phoebe is important
Just as she is.
I am.
She can shine through
Rapunzel dancing down below.
I can.
Phoebe wants to learn
To shine for no one but herself.
I do.
Learning to shine
Is not the hardest thing of all.
The hardest thing of all
Is learning to accept
That you, too, are allowed to shine.
Watch me.
Go slowly, go swiftly.
Go brightly, go far.
Watch me.
Phoebe doesn’t remember
Her past and its darkness,
But that’s quite all right.
You don’t need to remember
To rediscover yourself, after all.
Phoebe knows how to shine.
It’s only fear
Holds you back.
I lied.
The hardest thing of all
Isn’t accepting yourself.
It’s letting go of
Fear
Darkness
Pain
It’s the trip through woods
That led to your tower.
It’s the changes it wrought
And the changes you’ll bring.
The hardest thing of all
Is learning who you are.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Such a long way to go.
Phoebe, Phoebe,
On my way home.
And what of her prince?
The prince wanders.
Far, near, who knows?
Perhaps she’ll see him again.
Some day.
She doesn’t have time to chase princes.
There’s a tower to build,
And a forest to shine over.
So she’s building her home,
Her tower so bright,
And still hopes that one day,
She’ll hear a voice, saying
Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair.
Phoebe, oh, Phoebe,
You’re shining so bright.
And she’ll answer it,
Gently and soft, saying
I don’t need
To be saved.
But I want,
Oh, I want
To be loved.
And perhaps there will be love
And perhaps there won’t.
But she’ll shine so brightly,
As she dances like Rapunzel,
Down below her tower
Or up in its heights.
Moon-gentle dark Phoebe.
Sun-fierce bright Phoebe.
Shine, Phoebe,
Shine brightly.
Acknowledgements
So many thanks, as always, to my friends and family, as well as everyone who has ever shown me kindness. Rapunzel, Rapunzel starts off strongly inspired by my own childhood memories of bullying and anxiety at school before it dives into straight-up fairy tale allegory of (young and new) adult life and rediscovering the kind of person you might have been had your life turned out differently.
Originally, this verse novel collection had the working title of Person In Progress, because that’s what we all are, always, as we continue to learn and grow. I never expected it to turn into a fairy tale retelling, of sorts, given the kind of story it started out as. But then since the story in Rapunzel, Rapunzel started off so deeply personal to me and given how important fairy tales are to me, perhaps it’s unsurprising that the narrative took that plunge into full on fairy tale retelling. It is, after all, one of the main ways in which I’ve always made sense of the world.
I would like to offer especial thanks to Anonymous, who has been my bestie, a support and an encouragement for many years. I love you, now and always.
You, reader, thank you for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed it! I tell my stories to make the world a brighter and more compassionate place. I hope this book touched you in some way and left your world a little better than before you picked it up.
Thank you all. You are the best!
About the Author
Lynn O’Connacht has an MA in English literature and creative writing, but wouldn’t call herself an authority on either. She currently resides on the European continent and her idiom and spelling are, despite her best efforts, geographically confuse
d, poor things. Her tastes are equally eclectic, though fantasy will always be her first love. She has been chasing stories one way or another since she was old enough to follow a narrative.
Connect with Lynn online:
http://www.leoconnacht.com
http://twitter.com/lynnoconnacht
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Rapunzel, Rapunzel
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a queer retelling of The Little Mermaid
I don’t remember
Being born.
I don’t remember.
I don’t
Remember.
But I remember being different.
I remember.
My sisters eeling through the waters,
Up and ever up, to where the tall-crabs are.
Laughter bouncing through the waves,
As the tall-crabs and their moving lands fall.
I remember.
Being left behind because I am too little,
Around and around, staying down low.
Making my own paths through the waters,
As I flit between the sunken wreckage.
I remember.
My first time following my sisters,
Up and ever up, though there’s no storm.
Song spouting from our hearts like whales,
As we sit on warm, rough rock.
I remember.
Being scared of the thunder,
The quick way it all turns bottom-dark.
My sisters laughing and pushing me into the water,
As they look for signs of the moving land.
I remember.
The quick vicious biting of my sisters
As I ask them why we do this.
The pull of joining them in their hunt
For tall-crabs that don’t belong in the water.
I remember.
Tall-crabs aren’t like crabs.
Not really.
Crabs are hard and cute.
They pinch.
Tall-crabs…
Tall-crabs can move like crabs.
I like that about them.
They can pinch you too
If you pull them down after a storm,
But it’s…
It’s not much of a pinch.
You can barely feel it.
Tall-crabs have shells too,
But they’re not very useful.
You tear them off quick as biting.
I’m not sure why they have such soft shells.
I want to ask why.
My sisters do not know or care.
Tall-crabs are easy food,
Better than fish or sharks.
But why do tall-crabs have such soft shells?
When I was small
My sisters would tell me stories
About what it’s like to hunt the tall-crabs.
The quick flick-flick of your tail,
Their fingers scratching at your scales.
It sounded adventurous.
It sounded daring.
It sounded fun.
So the first time my sisters let me join them
I am excited. ^_^
I will get to see my first tall-crab!
We sit on the small island,
Or lounge against the rock,
The hunting song spilling from us
And I do not know it yet.