THE OPERA STEPMOTHER

She was there, Lucille, when I came of age,

not when escape of rape in unprotected nights

meant unlocked doors and missing fathers,

no dagger in the chamber of non-connubial rights

but a flight down stairs by a frightened child,

stranger in pursuit. "Bad dream," she said,

summoned by neighbors from a tavern tryst

to calm her wild eyed child in torn pajamas,

unsafe ever-after in any man's bedroom.

She was there when I became a woman,

tightening a sanitary belt beneath my "whozit"

she called it, becoming my gentle guide

to the world of women as the blood flower

broke its bright red stain on virginal sheets

as if at deflowering.  At ten I wore her clothes

secretly to school as if her pretty blouse

could transform me, become her, maybe,

restore my place at the feet of her man. 

Lucia (not di Lammermoor) but young country

schoolmarm, blonde to my darkling Carmen,

Queen to my unseated princess whose

sleep lasted 40 years, her prince a father

gone too soon, the slipper shattered,

the heart pierced, a girl become a woman,

asleep, asleep, in her glass coffin.