POISON PEN LETTERS

HER NAME MEANS PRINCESS

Her name means ‘princess’ and her father called her ‘precious’ once and her mother dressed her in pink dresses and did her hair in curls. And she was bonnie. Didn’t everyone say so? And she was used to getting her own way and the stamp of her little foot and the pretty pout of her lips and her arms folded into a stubborn knot, until the world was put right again and ordered just the way she wished it.

Now she is grown and she stamps her foot still, so hard the floorboards crack and dust from the floor rises in small clouds; and her bottom lip still quivers, just enough it can be seen; and she wants everything her way or no way at all.

But the world that bent like this and like that and all to make a little girl smile, that same world does not care for her now she is grown. Listen and you’ll hear the tut tut of disapproval where before there was ‘bonnie’ and everyone agreeing. So she slams doors and screams at walls and pulls her hair straight as nails.

The people are not moved.

So she sits in her room, hunched and hooked, and she is not to be disturbed, not unless… and dust settles and the air grows warm, fizzes like spilled electricity, and all her pent up spite she sets to wasp-words that she tucks into letters and those letters she sends out to this place or that. And by such small acts of malice she thinks she makes a difference; and she does, but it is not the difference that she thinks to make.