Just Another Panic Attack Cinderella
- Nov 27, 2020
- 2 min read
by Sarah Wallis
Cinderella sips her wine, tries not to choke, breathe the liquor down, everyone seems to be looking,
they all know her story, she doesn’t know theirs and he’s left her on her own again at a ridiculous party, she can’t handle,
looks around at the spinning, smiling faces, finding her feet, plucking up courage to speak when a group movement
takes hold like a dance, the twitchers and her Prince Charming are leaving the pub en masse, a swooping flock, are all energy and chirpy direction, chasing down end pints and texting their mates, waving at the wives club, gathered
to gossip, bored and getting unruly, white wine still on the go, things about to be said, the boys’ cargo shorts pockets full of baggy over-spill, binoculars bang new hearts on their chests, and their souped-up
cars fire a range of shut doors, one after the other, engines are go, gunned, they are on the hunt for something unusual, reports flood through of a rose-coloured starling, a rarity to note in their scuffed spotters books.
And the bird, quite unsuspecting the fuss headed her way, must preen the rose feathers, preen
the black, make like a magpie in flight, as the happy disguised, like a first date dress somewhere,
hanging, forlorn now, only an empty echo of pride, swaying in the breeze of a half-open window
twitching memories, the lost shoe, a dress liquid as vodka.
Sarah Wallis is a surrealist, poet-playwright, based in Scotland. She has degrees in creative subjects from Leeds, UEA and Birmingham U. Life was more structured in academia. On the outside it’s more surreal. But what is real? Aren’t we all constructions? Enjoy the journey. Of late you can find her work at Selcouth Station, Lunate, Crepe & Penn, Finished Creatures and a chapbook, Medusa Retold, from Fly on the Wall Press, a longform narrative poem told from Medusa’s point of view.
