6H: Another poem of mine that is also in my high school's literary magazine. It's along the same lines as Red Witch and Mr Mudly, in terms of style.

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Nightingale and the Dead Forest King

There was one of those maidens who was sickly sweet
And she dwelled in a plain candy village
But one day, the old mill burned down
While she was trapped inside
So all her skin burned off.
But somehow, she survived.

To cover her living muscle,
They made a sham of silk for skin
And stitched it to her body so lovely,
That they dared to call her a work of art.
The people of the town were so taken by her
So they locked her in a glass cage
And she was no better than a little bird

Like a prostitute on display, she sat in town square
Doomed to live out the rest of her days
Watching paper cutouts dance before her eyes
Until, one day, when the moon was too tired
To make it all the way across the sky
A leaf boy sailed down to her lonely little box
And bid that she come
“Little Nightingale, you have caught the eye
Of the dying king of the woods.
Quit being a whore for these people’s eyes
And come, or the forest king bids that you die.”

The glass shattered with freedom
And out she leapt
The little silk girl followed the gales
Through the milky light Artemis shined down.
And flew towards the woods on tiny broken wings
With her guide in tow,
And he showed her to the palace of the dying king

The trees parted in faith as they passed
And the rivers sang for her.
The branches moved out of her way
Lest they should catch and tear her skin off
And before them was a giant oak tree
The palace of the dear forest king

The sinners of the world held it aloft
The proud ones carried her up the crystal stairs
Lest her skin catch on a broken edge
And the gluttonous opened the big doors
Made of cursed skeletons bound by roots,
The lustful set their hands afire to light her way
And the envious whispered amongst themselves:
“Is that the bride of our dying king?
The one whose skin is all burned off?
Why couldn’t I have been so disfigured,
So that I might’ve gotten a sham of skin?”

At last, she was brought before the king
Oh, he was such an old man
With the wisdom of the world on his head,
For his crown
A cape of pinned moths to show his might
And canyons in his face, for his age, of course
The sloths served him with dreamy eyes
And the wrathful were crushed under his beetle covered feet
The flatterers picked the grime from his hair
While the poets were chained to his wrists in long lines

He spoke with a voice that shook the world’s lungs
“Is this that little silk girl?
With the hair made of softest threads
And eyebrows of the finest, tiniest stitch?”
She was put down before him, so that he might see
With eyes that had been bleached by the sun.
For a long while he took her in
A silent examination
But she happened to notice something
And could no longer hold her silence.

“Good king of the forest,” The little girl spoke
And her voice sounded as if it might break
“I have seen your palace, and I must know
You keep the sinners close, for sure,
But where are the virtuous ones?”
And he stood so swiftly that his bones cracked
A brittle arm fell to the floor
So while a slothful one replaced it for him
He spoke to her, so accusing.
“What good are the virtues? Tell me this
For you who lived amongst the good people of the world
Did they ever care for you at all?
Of did they use your beauty to gorge themselves?”

While she considered this, the dying king
Began to cough up his bloody lung
He took his place upon his rotting throne
And she watched in horror, the tissue he spat at her feet
It was then she knew she had no choice
So she placed herself on the forest king’s lap
And curled up beneath his burlap beard.
“Thank you, for now I know,” She said
“Heaven may be beautiful, but hell is warm.”