Charles Gregory, Author

Fairy tale, you were.
Once upon a time—
damsel in distress,
queen of broken hearts,
toad for a son,
wedded to a beast,
bound by an unyielding curse.
You waited for the day,
for the knight,
the hero never written in.
Perhaps the author forgot him.
Perhaps the story was a lie—
a mask for aberrations,
penny dreadfuls by the bushel.

 

Years of terror.
Nights of torture.
Leather. Cord. Wood.
Galvanized teeth.
Rips. Bruises. Blood.
Pus.
And yet—justice finds a way.
The cunning fall.
A sojourn begins.

 

An odyssey thus embarked.
Escaping the village I was born into.
Fleeing haunted forests.
Seduced by the ocean’s call.
Mysteries of the deep beckon.
Mirages of treasure in sight—
pleasure like a drunkard’s dream.
But even the prodigal
had a home to return to.

 

False novel.
False start.
Prelude abandoned a few words in.
Shock. Confusion.
The story cast away—
until years later,
a summer’s journey to nowhere,
you handed me CliffsNotes
with pages missing.

 

Love.
Heartbreak.
What might have been.
For you.
For me.
We’ll never know.
Dreams of happy endings—
or nightmares still to come?

 

Big Bad Wolf
loses his howl,
returns to the village—
less vicious,
but vicious still.
Red Riding Hood welcomes the beast,
for she is not she without he.
Some wear their tragedy
like a second skin.

 

A born superhero,
castrated of every dignity,
who once relinquished his soul
and bled for years to win it back.
A legacy of failures
scarred his story.
Severed from His light,
His strength—
he became a crimson-stained knight,
twisted gargoyle of a lion,
returning to face the wolf.

 

The battle raged for years,
casualties on every side,
till the lion taught the wolf—fear
but in mercy spared the kill.
Strength on display—
but at a tragic cost:
exiled from the kingdom.

 

But the wolf was a shapeshifter,
a man in wolf’s clothing,
posing as a sheep.
Still, men are mortal—
they grow old,
grow sick,
and die.
Yet, between sickness and death,
mortal enemies’ hearts can change.
The lion befriended the wolf
and granted him a hero’s ballad
and burial.

 

Years passed like time travel,
phasing into the distant future.
Love, loss, broken vows, fractured timelines—
destinies rewritten.
Alternate stories.
Alternate lives.
Bonds forever broken,
or barely held together.
Yet He who makes all things new intercedes:
new life, new love, new destinies,
and new losses.
New heartbreaks.
But hope remains steadfast.

 

Now here I am
at your final study,
rereading the place
where the story began.
The present has rewritten the past,
and the past keeps rewriting the future.
You were the damsel,
the villain,
the hero,
the redeemed,
the saint,
and the hypocrite.

You were human.

 

Now, in these fading pages,
memory bends and folds upon itself.
I am as lost as ever,
deciphering the glyphs
on your scroll.
As I stand,
where the last chapter closes
and the forever silence begins to call.

 

 

I know this poem is cryptically layered and heavy on metaphor—it’s me working through my relationship with a family member. I’m also trying to understand who I’ve been in their story, and who they’ve been in mine. Some of the stanzas don’t flow smoothly, and that’s intentional. I thought about revising them for cleaner transitions, but left them as they are—because life doesn’t always move neatly from one chapter to the next.