Sleeping Beauty by Christina Ciufo

In a decrypted charcoal stone tower

interwoven with thorn vines, 

beyond the tattered, transparent 

white veil, lays a slumbering 

angelic maiden, cursed 

by a covetous fairy who recited 

a veracious incantation on her 

Christening. 

Her marble face remains untouched 

for hundreds of years, while the world, 

a time she once knew becomes withered

and in ruins. 

Golden, wavy hair, 

like golden leaves spurring out

of tree branches, flows over her shoulders

and breasts. A thin sunlight seep through 

the stone crack and hits upon her hair, 

illuminating her untainted beauty. 

Her lavished sapphire dress 

drapes over the bed’s edge, 

caressing against thin, fragile 

threads of spider webs. 

Her parents, the King and Queen, 

servants and the villagers slumber 

in their positions, dreaming of their 

the lost princess returning to their kingdom. 

The angelic maiden, the princess

continues to slumber in her confinement, 

dreaming of a nameless prince with 

Apollo’s face, kneeling at her bedside

and his smooth, fiery lips pressing 

onto her lips, contravention the curse. 

She also dreams of her prince’s hand reaching 

out for hers, pulling her from her bed, 

and waltzing on the ballroom floor. 

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Christina Ciufo is a passionate writer in poetry, short stories, flash fictions, fables, and completing her first novel. At a very young age, she always had a passion for writing stories and poems, specifically in fairytales, folklore, supernatural, and horror. After graduating Sacred Heart University with a BA in English, she continued to expand her writing abilities at Manhattanville College’s MFA Creative Writing Program and by May 2017, graduated with an MFA degree in Creative Writing. She has recently completed Sacred Heart University’s Education Program in December 2018 with a MAT in Teaching in both elementary and secondary and is currently a Sunday School Teacher at St. Timothy’s. She has appeared in Gravitas, Spillwords, Ovunque Siamo, Nymphs, Vamp Cat Magazine, Z Publishing Ohio, Truly Review, Mookychick, Door is a Jar Magazine, Bonnie’s Crew, The Poetry Question, Twist in Time Magazine and Moonchild Magazine.