POETRY Reading: Sleeping Beauty, by Ruth Aylett

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

Sleeping Beauty

She was never asleep.
That finger prick summed up
the tedium of her expected future:
spinning, while looking beautiful.
When she wanted to think
and read her books.

Her wicked godmother was disliked
for pissing people off, going travelling,
then reappearing uninvited
with disruptive interventions.
She seemed a good bet for advice.
Turned out she was into high tech,

the sort indistinguishable from magic,
including time-dilated bubbles
with force fields disguised as briars,
and she needed a young researcher.
Outside, the odd hundred years passed,
inside, a year or two of intensive work.

Nor was he ever a prince,
except with @PrinceCharming handle
for insta and twitter, and incel banter.
She clicked on ‘LHC latest’
but that link was his dark web hack,
that cut apart her firewall and barriers.

Let’s draw a veil
over what happened next.
Good guess, no kiss,
and if there was
blood on the carpet
it wasn’t hers.