'The Princess and the Blankets' by Rosaleen Lynch

All those mattresses are useless for any princess, Mama says, won't keep you warm like blankets, no, you gotta wrap yourself in layers, like a baby-burrito with a meaty-you-middle, or like a caterpillar chrysalis with a cocoon round a very-hungry-butterfly-you or like a dead-body-you in a movie, to be rolled in a rug, or a kidnapped-you or a just-hiding-you, trying to get out of the house without anyone guessing it's you, wrapped in the blue-mottled rug from your bedroom, the rug you got from the car-boot-sale for the new squat, the rug with the indentations of bed legs like miniature graves dug in the pile, the rug with gum stuck from boys boots, dog and cat hair and spilt glitter and paint splatters from art projects and animals long gone, but the fibres still hold on and won’t let go of the three yellow-label stickers, with 'Sale', 'Reduced' and 'Final Clearance', but it doesn't matter, Mama and Papa could still carry the dead-body or kidnapped or just-hiding-you between them, though the dust might make you sneeze, if you’re not already dead, and you'd be caught, before the ransom’s paid, or the sale’s been made, so best stay put, and if you still feel the cold, through all the layers of blankets, just like when the girl in the fairytale feels the pea through all those mattresses; if you still feel the cold, through all the layers of blankets, just like the girl bruises, though you’re wrapped up in your burrito, your cocoon or snug as a live or dead bug in a rug; if you still feel the cold through all the layers of blankets, with you wrapped up just like the pea was once in a pod, Mama says that’s how you know you're a princess too.