hold on tight to its soot and dust?

I would be thinking otherwise,

before I did such a thing.

Prince:

Not me.

He carries her down the steps. When he is below:

A princely pair dances.

They dance. After a few rounds, the music stops.

Cinderella:

Look, look!

Prince:

Like it’s telling us to be still.

Cinderella:

It wants this too. It’s a very

sensitive creature, not wanting

its sound to be lost in the dance.

It proves our imagination

is alive: we dance in a dream

as well as if it were real. In this case

a dance doesn’t want to be danced,

to make noise. Empathy can dance,

too without foot and without sound.

Quiet, for we must listen, it’s

what the music wants of us too!

The music begins anew.

Prince:

Listen, as sweet as any dream.

Cinderella:

Yes, it is a dream, so subtly

causing the dream to stir in us.

O, how it can’t bear a wide room.

It escapes into the silence,

where it moves nothing but the air

slowly back and forth. Let us sink

completely into its substance.

Thereafter we will forget what

we must forget. Let us seek out

the trail that leads to empathy,

the one we lost in our vulgar

passions. It will not be easy

to find this sweetness. It requires

infinite patience, like a sense

rarely achieved. It’s so easy,

like when we wish to comprehend

the incomprehensible. Come,

let’s rest serene.

Prince:

Your words ring as sweet as music.

Cinderella:

Hush, don’t disturb me in this thought

that, half resolved, gives me such pain.

Once it gets out, I’ll be happy

and cheerful, as you prefer me.

But it will never leave its cell,

this sense of being forsaken, which

I feel rising up in my heart.

It will fade away like a sound,

faint, guilty; and the memory

will never die. A part remains

with me until, perchance, there comes

some freak thing to save me from it.

Prince:

So what is this thought of yours then?

Cinderella:

Nothing, nothing at all—a whim.

When we hang on to a scruple

for much too long—something stupid—

yet that provides us with no end,

since a beginning, middle, end

are all but shifting things, never

with any sense, never, ever

knowing one’s heart. The end is:

I will be happy with you now.

Prince:

How you move me, and how you charm

me with your impulsivity,

which, with every indication,

has this noble bearing. We will

forget who and just what we are,

share happiness, like the anguish

we sincerely shared. You’re quiet?

Cinderella:

Rather the captured nightingale,

one who sits trembling in the snare,

forgetting the song she would sing.

Prince:

You sweet-talk me!

Cinderella:

I’m all yours, so frightfully yours

that you must lend me your body

to hide myself deep inside it.

Prince:

I shall offer you a kingdom—

Cinderella: