You scrub tile vinyl floors.  Prepare the king’s
libations.  He will mark down yours, the cost
of hydration, sugar, bonnets in
the spring. In a leather ledger embossed
is everything — documents repayment
from cradle to the crypt. He knows you have
no money, prohibited from work when
your chores are done.  Lavender from your bath
fragrant upon skin, wicked to enjoy
what belongs to him?  Until you leave his
castle for one of women topless, tasseled,
familiar choreography though business,
you suppose.  Buys you your own castle,
one will burn down of a few you let in.
You learn to hide when you get one again. 

Image source: Pexels

Author’s Note:  I dedicate this sonnet looking at my own life, childhood of abuse and the stripping that I did to find my own castle — and then find one again after that was burned down to Kailey Tedesco and Shirley Jackson.  The former introduced me to the latter only recently and now one of my favorite books of all time We Have Always Lived In The Castle.  I am forever grateful for the introduction.  I still live in a castle, and when I make friends they are usually literary, dead or alive, and I love them so.