There once was a beautiful princess
whose life was pretty boring.
At least her parents were alive.
Dark eyes and hair, hoodies, sweatpants, nondescript
she disliked crowds.

At first glance, she fell in love
with a girl in the mirror
with the moon in the water

though others said it seemed dangerous
bemoaned the lack of pictures
the weekly disappearances
of both the princess and of red-eyed victims.
But no matter – like in all stories,
it worked out.

The princess wanted
to spend hours admiring her lover through clear dark eyes,
and it was so.
She wanted change at a gradual clip
and it was not so.
She did not want to be evicted from the palace
yet it was so.

So she changed
her stomach became a cast iron furnace
her skin warm gossamer
her lashes copper curtains.
at 6.46pm, the clockwork train was an hour late.
There were whispers that she took its timekeeping to rebuild herself.
No one knew if she took a new name,
or wandered, subsisting on echoes.
Lungs don’t need motivation to breathe.

The moral of this story is love at first sight isn’t real.
But I wonder why so many people subsist on echoes?