Poem: No Climbing

[polkadot-cat.livejournal.com]

This is a much-edited incarnation of a draft I posted here a little while ago.  All comments and critique welcome!

No Climbing 

stepping through white branches, she was Cinderella
ascending a palace staircase.  she’d left her shoes
below, hanging on the “No Climbing” sign.
 
going higher, her red dress snagged,
caught on branches’ ghostly fingers.
lost to tearing, the fabric trailed her like blood, as if she’d been stabbed.
 
her head breached the tree’s great crown,
a baby whale gasping into toxic air.
a brief, perfect moment of silence
swallowed her before
 
her cells began to tug apart,
scrambling away from each other.
 
pulled up on invisible string
into a rushing void, her dissolving eyes cried
as her arms grained away like sand.
 
with feet kicking into a hungry nothing,
welling up between her molecules:
a new trust in signs.