Oubliette

(Poetry Scales 16)

Playing with its new, Deluxe Castle Play-set,
A child found a door in the floor of the keep.
A miniscule, unmarked, windowless, chamber
Intended to imprison blackguards and thieves.

Needing a victim to justify the find
It locked away the sweet little doll princess.
(Never intending to use her anyway,
Next to dragons and knights she seemed quite senseless.)

The problem was that the little doll princess
Had for a crown, mommy’s favorite diamond ring.
Inside the promptly-forgotten Oubliette,
It did practically—and truly—cease to be.

Practically while the child never remembered
To release her once her sentence had been served.
Truly, because the castle some years later
Went to rest in a landfill quite unobserved.