Cinderella

Staircase wide, black.
It runs grandly up
to an amber sky
flecked with gold.

Once said among the old:
the prince was blind
in just such a way:
faces once met then would fade

upon leaving.  He could not fall in love.
Once the face beheld fell away
he could not, when again
he'd found it, match it

to memory.  So, too, names
were all the same, his mind for them
a helpless, frustrating
fog, light gray.  It was as though

he had to hold on to each
new soul by a marker
he'd laid:  a dark red frown,
a string of pearls, a glass shoe.

Were you to recall to him
the place and date you played
whist with his maid,
with luck he might place you.

So here is where, so long ago
he, frantic, stopped cold,
and with voracious eyes
watched torchlight dance on a gleaming toe.