Tangled

Once upon an unknown time,

in a magical land, far away,

there lived a princess called Rapunzel,

where in a tower, she must stay.

She was stolen as a child,

by an evil, wicked witch,

who killed both of her parents,

and left them rotting in a ditch.

She locked Rapunzel in the tower,

in rags with feet left bare,

where she was used for the magic,

stored in her gorgeous long blond hair.

As Rapunzel grew, she cottoned on,

that the witch was not her mother;

they had different facial features

and looked nothing like each other.

Rapunzel had to let her use,

her luscious hair to climb,

up the tower from the outside,

when she would visit, time to time.

The witch would give her scraps of food,

and all the sustenance she’d need,

as she warned her of the dangers,

from outside, that she should heed.

But Rapunzel dreamed of her escape,

of living her life out in the wood,

amongst the bunnies and the butterflies.

A free woman, if she could.

She begged the witch to kill her boredom,

who chose to humour her,

leaving supplies for hobbies in the tower,

if she was lucky, literature.

She once considered jumping,

in the bleak mid-winter, to the floor,

to use the snow for a safe landing,

But of its depths, she was not sure.

If it was not as deep as it looked -

from the tower window, way up here,

then she would surely die...

She dismissed the idea out of fear.

She thought that maybe she could

use her hair, to lower herself down,

but she didn’t want to lose her grip,

and plummet headfirst to the ground.

The years passed by as Rapunzel sat,

a prisoner in her tower,

and when the witch would visit,

in the shadows, she would cower.

Then one fateful day, a handsome man

who was riding through the forest on his horse,

spotted the tower in the distance,

and rode his noble stead across.

Through the thick brush and all the brambles,

past the waterfalls and leafless winter trees,

he arrived at the tower as day turned to dusk,

bringing with it a bitter breeze.

He shouted up towards the top,

Rapunzel heard, with sweet relief,

she darted towards the tower window,

and gasped in disbelief.

She pleaded to be rescued,

explained her desperate situation,

he promised her would save her,

Rapunzel swooned with pure elation.

He told her could climb up,

but he wouldn’t be able to get her down.

He needed to go and gather some supplies

from a shop in the nearest town.

But it was at least three days ride,

he’d been camping in the wood,

he would run his horse as a gallop,

and return as quickly as he could.

He told Rapunzel to be brave,

he would be back with a strong rope.

As he rode off into the sunset,

Rapunzel finally had some hope.

She ran up to her bedroom,

and began to pack her bags,

her books and all her things,

her hairbrush and her rags.

She raced back towards the stairs,

as she collided with the door,

she screamed and stumbled down them,

and smacked her head upon the floor.

She woke up an hour later,

with her hair tangled in a mess,

her head was thumping something fierce,

and blood dripped down her dress.

She tried to get up from the floor,

but to her shock and her dismay,

she could not move her head much,

so on the floor, she had to stay.

She tried to look behind her,

to see what held her to the floor,

her hair pulled sharply against her scalp,

hurting her even more.

She looked up instead and realised,

her magical hair was tangled,

across the wooden beams,

and down the stairs,

it crossed and swooped and angled.

Rapunzel's eyes grew wide with shock,

as she tried pulling at her hair,

but it knotted even further

and she cried out in despair.

She struggled to get free,

as the day grew quickly older.

The sun disappeared behind the trees,

as she shivered and got colder.

She couldn’t light the fire,

from her position on the floor,

and she couldn’t reach to close

the window’s wooden shutter door.

Her hair pinned her from all angles,

tangled across the room and its high beams,

I guess I’m sleeping here tonight, she thought,

In the freezing cold, it seems.

She tried to stretch and reach a blanket,

that hung over a nearby chair,

but couldn’t quite reach the fabric,

as her lean ripped-out bits of hair.

She began to think that maybe,

there was only one real option,

to pull her hair out from her scalp,

so she gripped her roots right at the bottom.

With fistfuls of golden hair,

she began to pull with all her might,

ripping out small patches at a time,

with the end still far from sight.

She screamed and squealed and kicked,

as she pulled out strands of hair.

Blood trickled down her face,

but she refused to care.

Her scalp burned beneath her grasp

as she piled her hair upon the floor.

Determination spurred her on,

and she cried and pulled out more.

But poor Rapunzel had been blessed,

with hair so thick and full,

no matter how much she clawed out,

there were always handfuls more.

She sobbed as the room grew colder,

her arms felt numb and heavy,

her hands shook as she raised her arms,

trying to keep them steady.

But she had grown tired in her fight,

to free herself from the web of hair,

that she curled up in a ball,

and decided to stay there.

To wait out the long night

and try again once sunlight beams,

into the room once more and warms her

she sighed and surrendered to her dreams.

The handsome man came racing back,

three days later, on his horse,

with a large bag upon his back,

filled with supplies, of course.

He called up to the tower window,

but Rapunzel didn’t answer,

so he started the long climb,

with the grace of a seasoned ballet dancer.

He ascended the tower with ease,

careful not to lose his grip,

on the cold, wet stone underneath his hands,

he would be dead if he should slip.

He made it look almost easy

as he finally reached the top,

and peered inside the window;

Oh, what a shock he got.

Rapunzel lay there dead,

at the bottom of the stair,

her hair strung up like decorations,

with blood splattered here and there.

She had icicles in her eyelashes,

her face sunken from dehydration,

with her scalp half bald and bleeding,

like Frankenstein's creation.

Disgusted with the sight,

he climbed back down in a fluster,

and threw up as he ran,

with all the strength that he could muster.

He found his horse and galloped,

way off into the distance,

He had wanted to rescue a princess,

But that wouldn’t happen in this instance.

He’d been searching for a long time,

to find his happily ever after.

It was such a shame that this one

had ended in disaster.

He told no one of his plight,

and over time he just forgot.

Leaving poor Rapunzel in the castle,

where - like her parents - she would rot.