Enchanted

When I was a child
I thought that beyond the highway barriers
past the half-sized walls
outlining subdivisions
was another land
a secret garden
or perhaps a moat
a dragon, and a castle.
The ivy trailing over the concrete-- or was it stone?
Hinted at greatness past
A Narnia or enchanted wood.
Now I know that
those are the unwanted properties
the ones the realtor
works overtime to sell.
Close to the road
the smells of tar and gasoline
intrude on people's fairytales.
Traffic jams and a chorus of horns
don't make for happily-ever-afters.
Past childhood, I know
that such things don't exist.
Lewis wrote an allegory.
In Aslan's kingdom, lipstick
was a sin and worth
had color.
In his happily-ever-after, the
Penvensie kids were dead.
Real life is Wicked,
the twisted, backwards version
where the slipper doesn't fit, where
poor Ella hits her head
on the ceiling made of glass,
where Little Red
is devoured and bone-thin Beauty
stays asleep.  Here,
adults count dragon-half lives and
use smoke and mirrors for their spells.