What the Ashes Could Not Hold

She wakes not to orders but to birdsong, 

steps not on cold stone but on morning grass 

still wet with possibility.

No glass slipper confines her foot— 

She walks barefoot through markets, 

through forests, through cities 

that don't yet know her name.

Her hands, once scrubbing, now sculpting clay, 

or holding a pen that bleeds stories 

the hearth never heard. 

Or perhaps they're stained with soil 

from a garden entirely her own, 

where she plants what she chooses 

and tends only to beauty.

She learns the language of stars, 

charts courses across seas 

in ships with sails like wedding veils 

torn free and repurposed for adventure.

Some days she is quiet— reading in libraries, thinking in cafés, befriending strangers who 

see her not as a servant or a princess but simply as herself.

She falls in love, maybe, 

or maybe not— 

but if she does, it's on a Tuesday afternoon 

with someone who asks her thoughts, 

not her hand.

No clock strikes midnight in this life. 

Time is hers to spend or waste, 

to rush or let dissolve like sugar 

in the tea she drinks at dawn, 

watching a world that finally 

belongs to no one but her.

© 𝑴𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒐𝒘 𝑴𝒖𝒔𝒆