Some Thoughts on Beauty

The joke's on me:

Last month I told my classes I was going to stop giving homework assignments this spring.

Well.

We're now in the third week of writing from online prompts.

Last week, the assignment was to write about beauty. About something, someone, some place that's beautiful.

Which got me thinking about Sleeping Beauty, or Aurora, as she's called in some versions of the story.

Why is she beautiful? Is it because she's blond? Nice? A victim?

Here's a draft of what I came up with:




On Beauty



Aurora –



a princess,



beautiful, 



not because she is a princess

not because she is rescued and kissed

not because she is fair or female or rich –



beautiful because

she’s alive

and having slept for so long,



she loves everything –

from a shard of toasted almond between her teeth

to the honeyed oak of the spinning wheel against the whorls of her fingertips –



she is now moved by the rolling opulence of blue-gray clouds tinted with amber light

and the gleaming black feathers of the crow’s everyday coat

and the glistening and wriggling worm's skin, pink as a cherry’s petal, in the jeweled grass –



but mostly it’s the heart,

the beating heart

of every being,

even the hearts of those who mean her harm –

that she holds in awe –



not because

she’s a masochist or a fool

but because in this moment she sees



even Carabosse –

the “bad” fairy –

the one who stomped and spit and swore when she wasn’t welcomed –

the one with molting robes and a tongue of rotting meat

and brittle kernels for teeth –


Aurora knows this being, too, once had a newborn heart 

that wanted nothing

but to beat in peace,

like butterfly wings rising from a leaf –



oh



Aurora

the princess

awake now

but still dreaming



of massaging the knots of rage lodged between Carabosse’s shoulder blades

until her enemy sighs,

puts away her poisons and plots,

and gradually begins to roll and chirp and lick and purr and arch –



yes



Aurora dares to imagine



Carabosse in front of a mirror, delighted

with the ragged bump on the bridge of her nose

and the syllables of her name that sound

like the rustle of bamboo shielding her hut from a thrash of storms,

like the hush-a-bye swaths of pink stripes in the evening sky

and like the redolent voice of pines

singing in the star-pricked night:



Come, Beauty, come Carabosse,

for you have always been,

will always be,

one 

of us.





© 2020 Linda Ferguson