you deserve

Truth clenched in both hands

For years I have puzzled

How would she know 

“The real story?”

The only “mother” she ever knew kept her locked in a tower

Named her after stolen

Salad greens

Tell your twin 

Running to Canada was the

line I could not, would not

Cross for love

Unlike a man we both know

Who crossed lines of  law and love 

Abandoned wife and children

Hid his treasure 

Said he could not pay

No fairytale love-

Story for his first wife

Little ones

there are records of these things

The faces of the abandoned are familiar to you now

Unlike your own mother’s

Who they kept from you 

Fear and sin will make an ordinary

Monster out of us all.

Sadie’s foster mother told me once-

They are Christians, you know!

Christians do not steal babies

Live lies

Or put their assets in their girlfriends’ names

But how would Rapunzel know that?

She would have to borrow her sisters’

Plaited hair

A ladder to

Set all three free

Then look for the small stones

Of Truth

Scattered along 

the long road 

Home.