An Apology: 2nd Draft

Is it better than the first?….

I want an apology.
For the gloss wrapped varnish
of womans magazines.

For the fish slick pages
of fake dreams,
models like cars,

with their red, slashed
gloss of beguiling charms,
come hither dressed in

children’s jeans.
I want an apology
for the girl,

splaying the weight of her thighs
on a gym seat, frowning in a mirror
and connecting up the

place at which they meet with
skimming the calories in breakfast.
I want an apology – for the long-fast

of the woman shivering in spring,
examining her wrists
like a witch through railings .

For the witch,
who’s really just a
woman over 30,

trying to hide
the lines that she’s made
whilst falling in love and

breaking her heart and
having a future.
I want an apology-

for The ‘Evil’ Queen –
happy to be childless
and The White Witch –

carving a world
from the ribs of the man
who’d been thinking he’d made her.

For the blood on her gown
and the hooves in her face
and the maw of a lion.

For Medusa
and Delilah,
and the old crone,

and the weird sisters-
and for the 4 siblings
that couldn’t all be

Cinderella:
for the women who fall
so she can stand

I want an apology.
Sometime. Anytime.
Now.