Shhh, they tell me. You are a tiny Christmas fairy
coming in with the Sugar Plum. Silver dress,

pink roses, jewels and lace falling over my fingers.
The other fairies trail in on quiet tiptoes, but

music is church-sweet, so I do what I want to
do there. In I come, screaming the quiet away,

because, yes, with scissors on the dressing table,
I'd cut my hair, my head now spiked as Nana's

cockatoo. I scream until the Sugar Plum twists
the scissors from my hand, lifts me up, spins,

dips, and, as a hundred hands clap and clap, she
toe-shoes me from hot light into cold shadow.