When Snow White Refused to Wash the Dishes
the dwarves asked her to leave.
Her hands red from scrubbing
the floor all day, she didn't want
to beg to stay, so she put on
her cloak and strutted out the front
door, heading toward the hut
she’d seen the day before.
She knocked on the door,
but when the master stepped out,
his ox arms devouring the doorway,
she realized he was the huntsman
who’d tried to stab her with his dagger.
He suddenly cried and begged
for forgiveness. No longer afraid
of him, she asked to come inside.
That night, she and her huntsman
fucked on the sticky floor, the grimy
kitchen table, the wrinkly old bed.
Afterwards, he asked if she’d
finally forgiven him. But she ordered
him to clean the hut.
“Then you’ll forgive me?” he asked with hope.
She said nothing, cutting an apple
with a knife and eating each slice
while he cleaned the dirty dishes
in buckets of suds and tears.
Award-winning gay storyteller Jacob Butlett (he/him) holds an A.A. in General Studies and a B.A. in Creative Writing. In 2017 he won the Bauerly-Roseliep Scholarship for literary excellence, and in 2018 he received a Pushcart Prize nomination for his poetry. Some of his work has been published in The MacGuffin, Panoply, Rat's Ass Review, Cacti Fur, Gone Lawn, Rabid Oak, Ghost City Review, Lunch Ticket, Fterota Logia, Into the Void, and plain china. He was selected as a finalist in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards residency competition of 2019.