A corset tight around my waist

White powder across my nose

Was I doll, 

painted and dressed?

Pinned and prettied,

donned in the best?

A princess I was

soon to be queen

my wishes died

quiet and unseen.

My heart was tearing

like my dress at the seams

when I broke my corset

with my dreams.

I screamed at my mother

and wept all night long

stared at the moon

listened to her song.

She told me to run

far, far away

chase my dreams

not be mother's prey.

I awoke in the morning

and grabbed a sack

filled it with

knick-knacks.

I was gone that day

across the land

on my horse

the color of sand.

I lived as a peasant

on the rich countryside

Now I could smile

as I worked outside.

No more long dinners

no more masks

free from lies

and pointless tasks.

One day I met a man

eyes the color of sky

we fell in love

in the summer of July.

He wanted my hand

we would be married by dusk

what I didn't know

was that he was to be

the next King

of the land.

Snow in London again, sounds pretty but the reality of it is that it's freezing.   I rub my hands together, and inspect them, blue fingers and ingrained soot under my nails.  I shrug and the cold slips under my layers of clothes and bites me bitterly.  I stamp my feet and look at the hole in one shoe.  I lean down and look closer, is that a black toe?   I don't really know if its frostbitten or not really, but it's exposed to the dirt and the soot. I stamp my feet harder trying to feel them, unsuccessfully.

I blow on my hands trying to warm them.  I have wrapped old rags around them in an attempt to keep them warm but they are wet down and I can feel the damp and cold pulling at my very bones.  My stomach gurgles.  How can it gurgle when there is nothing in it?    I walk up and down trying to keep warm, and wait where John said I should wait.  

He has gone to get the cleaning brush and hand cart for the chimneys here.  Should be on a circus wheel that cart, gets passed from person to person like a collection plate.    I'm right proud of how fast I can do them now, been up them since I was five.  First time scared the life out of me, but I get a coin and something warm in my belly.  Once I got past the scared feeling and sped things up like John yelled at me to do, I can go fast and still get coin to have something to eat and do at least 3 houses in a day.  Well depending on how many chimneys there are.   I feel in my pockets, there isn't even a crust of bread left now.   I wonder what it feels like to never be hungry and can't even imagine the feeling because hunger always feels like a rat gnawing my insides.

John says that orphan kids, that's me, were built for chimney jobs.  It's why he chose me really, said I was skinny enough to get in spaces others couldn't.  I'm worried a bit 'cause I keep growing and now at 6 I soon wont be able to fit up some places anymore.    I blow on my hands again.  John's taking his time and the day is growing bitterly cold even though its still so early.  I glance up at the sky, the clouds are reforming and the heavy snow feeling is again on the air.  I stamp my feet harder, the cold is biting through my clothes and I turn and walk over to to the step at the back of the house and pause in horror.   

There's a dead kid sitting on the step.   I step back and look up the roadway.  You can't even see the cobblestones as they are so covered in snow.  This back of house is a place we haven't been to before and no one much passes here.   I glance around again and listen to the clop of horse hooves the next street over.  I glance up at the tall dark building and it seems this kid could be here for days because this back door never seems used much.  

The snow piled up around him looks like he was carved there.   Curiosity gets the better of me and I go in closer and sniff.   Well he doesn't smell so I lean in and look at his face. The lashes of his eyes are dark and leaning on his blue cheeks.   He has an upturned nose sprinkled with freckles with little frozen rivulets of snot over his lip.   There's a sore or something on his lip and a grotty old scarf wrapped twice around his neck.   He has curling dark brown hair escaping out from under his cap which has a dusting of snow on it.   His hands are bright light blue, wrapped, black and filthy nails, resting lightly on his legs like he just took a load off for five minutes.   Ripped dirty trousers are on his thin legs and he looks about 6 years old but it's hard to tell because he's just there and just frozen.   He looks like every other street kid on the street.  Orphans are everywhere.

No puffs of breath in the cold air.  Nothing.   I take a risk and poke his hand.  I snatch my hand back, he's a rock, or like a piece of wood.  No movement, just like stone.  I survey him carefully.  How sad, poor kid, clearly a street kid like me, no one would miss him.   I wonder if I should tell John, if he ever turns up that is.  I turn and look in the darkening early morning light.  Nope still no sign of the blasted man.  Always with the wait here at this house, I'll be back.   Could take forever.

I walk away from the kid.  It's making me feel right morbid being in the same space as him.  There are little flurries of snow now starting in the air and I am starting to feel really annoyed with John.  If I didn't need the coin so much for a bite, I wouldn't be out.  I would be curled down at the Spotted Dick hunkered under a table by the fire.  Bess, the maid, she lets me sneak in and warm myself on these sorts of days.  Thoughts of that bliss make me madder as I stamp up and down with a dead kid for company.

The flurries get thicker and I want to walk away but I know if I do, John will be off after the next kid and I won't have a job again for a long time.   I walk back and lean in to look at the kid again.  I look closer and flick the snow off his scarf and rub my eyes with blackened hands.   Hey!  He has the same material scarf as me!  I brush the snow from the dead kids shoulder, same jacket.  Go figure, what are the chances.  I lean down and flick snow off the shoes and see the hole in the shoe with the black toe.  Just like mine.  I take two steps backwards from the dead kid and look at my own shoes.

That's funny, it seems I can see the snow through my boots and I lean down to have a look.  I seem to be getting less and less solid.   I hold out my hands in front of me and feel a scream forming in the back of my throat, rasping and fighting to be free, my hands are bluish, intangible, becoming see through.  I glance again at the boy with the clothes like mine and I feel the scream break free from my vocal cords and fall into a space of nothing.  No breath puffs from my throat as I realize having never ever seen myself, and the realization bites, that the boy on the step in the same clothes as me, is me.  

I raise vacant eyes to the sky and flurries fall down with softening grace. Funny I don't feel cold anymore.

My corset clenched my waist and so did his arm around me. Together, he and I had circled the entire ballroom floor. "You are an excellent dancer, Your Majesty," I whispered as I pressed my lips together suggestively.

"As are you," he responded. "But I am afraid that I cannot recall your name."

I laughed and laughed and laughed. "You must have had too much to drink tonight to have forgotten my name," I said it loud enough that I knew the people dancing next to us could hear. "Do not worry, Your Majesty, my love, tonight is a celebration, you may drink all that you can." I moved my arms tighter around his neck and pressed my body against his. I felt his body stiffen, and I saw his green eyes spark hungrily. I had worn my bodice a little too tightly today, and when I pressed my chest against his it left little to the imagination of the immense pleasure that I could give him. I moved my arms onto his broad chest and arms and brought my lips up to lick his neck. He moaned with pleasure. I did too. The prince was mine. I loosened my corsage top and my breasts fell out, innocent and white, like fresh snow on my chest. He growled like an animal and brought his head down to nuzzle them in my breasts, but I pulled away. He stumbled forward.

"I'm thirsty." I announced. "I'm going to get us some wine." I walked away. I felt his eyes following me, like a moth drawn to a flame. I knew that he noticed the way the dress seemed to hug my curves perfectly. My dress was much more exciting than any of his other quiet, polite suitors. To him, I was a breath of fresh air. I did not turn around until I had taken a glass of wine. I only needed one.

When I returned he grabbed me as if I was meat and he was a starving man. I fell into it and splashed some of the red wine onto the white shirt of his pressed uniform. The prince was too distracted to notice. He brought his hands urgently around my waist and bent to lift me up. I laughed and left his grasp. "Oh, Your Majesty!" I exclaimed. "I went all this way to get you a drink! Won't you please do me the pleasure of drinking it." His mannerisms became the ones of a mad man and he drunkenly grabbed the glass from my hands and drank it in one gulp. He swayed on his feet and the drugged glass of wine caused him to fall forward onto me. I laughed loudly again. "Your Majesty," a few people turned to look at us and then quickly looked away. "Perhaps we should take this to another room." I dragged him into a hidden corridor of the palace that only I knew of, humming as I dragged along his lifeless body. To prying eyes it simply looked like I was taking him away for an innocent hookup.

I chuckled lightly to myself and I pulled out the decorative sword that he wore at parties out of his waistband. I admired it, letting the light gleam off of the polished metal and the many jewels that decorated it. What a shame that such a beautiful sword went unused. I could fix that. I swung it in the air and stabbed the prince in the chest. The blood stain blended with the wine stain until there was no differentiating the two. It let out a lovely coppery scent of crushed grapes and I could not resist taking a little taste.

It was the perfect crime. All night I had dropped hints of how drunk the prince was. Whoever found him would see the red wine splashed on his shirt and assume that he had drunkenly fallen on his own sword. I left the palace at the end of the night with all of the other guests. No one looked at me twice. Yet again, the best criminal in Victorian London escaped.