The Other Edge of Beauty

Blemished: Snot nose. Miss Prissy Princess. The boys, like ugly little toads, hopped around Snow White-but she was dirt black inside.

Snatched: Her rich parents, smashed by a drunk who swatted them dead, like flies. Orphaned, the judge awarded her to an unknown grandmother who drove her away to the Wyoming Mountains.

Angered: The old woman looked like a witch. The child simmered and boiled and bolted away into the hands of an alligator elegant man-"You have to take your clothes off."

Refreshed: That old mountain magic flowering in that young breast, glowing in that wondering mind, and stretching rock strength down the bones of those swelling young legs.

Transformed: A dream summer of beauty and wonder, beauty burning within and glowing all outward, enchanting like elven laughter, uplifting like the rainbow, breathtaking like the thunder, and warming like the sunlight.

Wise: Gram never told me what the tree meant. She just said look. She just said learn. She just said beauty. She just said love.