my father sips coffee while i dance
with a sailor on a strand of leftover
light from a dead star and i am
cinderella in the back bedroom
again twirling in delicate circles
before i lose my shoe on the shag
carpet then my father coughs from
his perch on a moonbeam and i am
a banana named cinderella and my
stepsisters are viciously pulling off
my peels and the part of the story
i choose to forget is when all the
peels have been amputated and
there is no cinderella left to twirl
and my father pulls the lid off his
coffee to get to the grounds at
the bottom of his paper cup