The Princess Escapes Her Myth

For every story there is one part told and another uncharted. So she tries
to find the edges of her myth: past the lakes and the dragons, the princes
and the mazes, the castles and the wolves with gentlemen’s hands. Their
kindness bears a stench like burning — why does fire only lick, when
everything is to its taste? Every hand she ever held had grazed her. Now
there is just her and her heart in the forest, its hooves beating around her
frame. A strange thing to have a body. If only there were a way to touch the
world without this being, this being seen. She no longer wants to be looked
at; even looking was a kind of robbery. Womanhood fell upon her like a
cloak full of thorns. She had done all there was to do: She had been dutiful,
she had been curious, she had been bad, she had been true. Once there was
a princess eaten by tower eaten by teller. How well she fit on their tongues:
Lovely, lonely, lost. She is running. Each territory crossed is a new word
revealed, every river, every hill. If they find her now, she would go. She
would surrender herself as a thing untameable. She would set their
landscape alight, turn her back on the story. As if she were not afraid of
whatever lay beyond. As if the darkness were a skin for her to pierce
through, and flee into the open wound.

Anuja Mitra

Anuja Mitra studies Law, English and Classical Studies at the University of Auckland. She has writing published or forthcoming in Signals, Starling, Sweet Mammalian, Mayhem, Three Lamps and Poetry NZ. Her work was included in the 2017-2018 National Library exhibition “The Next Word: Contemporary New Zealand Poetry” and she is co-founder of the online arts platform Oscen.