The Opera Stepmother

She was there for me when I came of age, but when, for a girl of unlocked doors and a missing father. in flight down the stairs, an intruder pursuing, no dagger in the chamber of non-connubial rights. "Bad dream," she said, when summoned home from a tavern tryst to calm her child in torn pajamas, unsafe ever after in any man's arms. Yet, she was there for me with the sanitary belt, its necessary napkin, my gentle guide into the world of women, when the blood-flower broke its bright red stain on virginal sheets, auguring deflowering. Her pretty clothes?--borrowed, as if a mock stepmother in the mirror on the wall restored my fall from the favor of our king. Lucia, (not "di Lammermoor"), she did not stab the bridegroom, or go mad. Blonde to my darkling Carmen, queen to an unseated princess, whose sleep went forty years, the prince blind- sided, the slipper shattered, the horses harnessed, the child become a woman, asleep, asleep, in her glass coffin.