This wasn’t “once upon a time” in some far-away nation,
There was no princess, no prince, and no predestination.
No towers to the sky, and no knight in shining chain mail,
No dragons or royal battles – not that kind of fairy tale.
Just a girl reading of worlds she wished she could live in,
Just a boy with a secret, a pain he was given.
There wasn’t an “ah-ha” moment when they fell into love,
There weren’t two thousand trumpets or fireworks above,
They weren’t to be crowned king and queen,
Heck, she was only half-past sixteen.
And he’d go to college in the fall,
It couldn’t be a fairy tale at all.
Just a girl with a past that she’d rather leave behind her.
Just a boy who – somehow – managed to find her.
Just texts sent until the sky turned black,
Just comfort during her anxiety attack,
Midnight, when she couldn’t sleep,
And as she wrote, she started to weep.
Just a habit that he kept concealed,
She accepted once revealed,
Because she knew then,
That she had fallen again.
And she couldn’t turn back and be the same person she had been of late.
She couldn’t turn away from what she thought could have been fate.
“Not a fairy tale,” she muttered softly, wishing it could be,
Because she was now deep in love, and it seemed, so was he.
“Don’t believe it, girl, you know you get bruised when you fall,
So just write it off as a story, one day you’ll laugh as you recall.”
He called her an angel, maybe he didn’t know,
She was no angel but he was her hero.
He saved her from the darkness, from the night
That smothered her as it smothered the light.
But she couldn’t be the regal princess of the story,
And she wasn’t strong enough to be an angel full of glory.
She was scared. Can angels feel fear?
All she wanted seemed to be for him to be near.
“Not a fairy tale. There’s no such reality.
No happily-ever-after, so don’t start to believe…”
She’d never felt quite this way before,
Now all she wanted was to feel more.
She’d hold all of her fears at bay,
To hold him in her arms all day.
Yes, she loved his arms around her,
Couldn’t believe that he had found her.
Now she knew this feeling was true…
Saying, “I give my heart to you.”