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Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess…

She had skin woven from the fibers of shooting stars and lips that tasted like iambic pentameter sonnets in the summer. She shone and sparkled in a way so dazzling that sometimes his fingertips went numb if they dragged along her flawless arms for only a moment; when he crept close to embrace her the scent of the bit of skin behind her ear filled his head so perfectly that he thought he was falling through space The best part by far was when their eyes met, and his heart thundered and lightninged and he thought he could die happy at that moment.

…who was loved by a prince…

And sometimes she would catch him looking at her and she would wonder why he was so still. He did not move an inch except to breathe and open his mouth to tease her. She could see from the corner of her peripheral vision the way that his irises caressed the vastness of her curves, the way his palms itched to cup her cheek, and the way his lips twitched when they were close, as if they were ready to mouth the words he said only in her dreams. When his hand casually brushed against her legs she thought she heard them resonate through the rippling currents of air.

…from a great distance…

They played each other’s game of eyes-meeting-across-open-spaces chess; most nights while he lay in bed he couldn’t tell hot from cold nor south from something just a little too far on the chilling side, but he knew that something was askew. His mind was shredding itself into sardonic confetti every time he thought of someone else’s hands gliding across her coefficient of frictionless skin, and when he thought of someone else making her smile he wanted to scream that she was a romantic and no one was more romantic than he. Between veils of vanilla smoke he fought to convey all the things he wanted to whisper in her ear, but he knew that come the end of the night they would both say their obligated I-love-yous to someone who did not smell of lying in the open grass for hours.

…and up close she loved him back.

One day his irises wandered too far along the back-alley paths of her lips. She pushed him against the wall and spat in his face and beat his chest with her fists, hoping to hear something more than a dull echo so she knew he had an organ between his ribs that was capable of compassion. Her nails dragged along the nape of his neck and she demanded to know why he still played the stupid games of speaking in tongues and allegories, insisted on the knowledge of why he wouldn’t hold her hand or kiss her or call her beautiful, perfect, his. She kicked at his shins and scuffed his shoes and told him she could love him harder and softer and longer and better, so why wouldn’t he jump. With his throat pressed against the plaster, he couldn’t answer her ideals.

But that didn’t make a happily ever after.