once upon a time
there was a princess
who had always searched for her prince
searched high
and searched low
but never found anything
that didn't bore her.

she's play with some neighbors,
tug on their minds with her words
and try to entertain herself
but nothing ever impressed her -
she didn't expect it to.
the princess got more and more confused
wondering if her standards were too high

or her pool simply too shallow.
she came to the conclusion
that she would have to settle
that she would have to entertain herself
and give in to life's ordinary train
and follow it around the tracks
around around around.

one day she met a prince from a far away kingdom
someone she approached as a friend,
someone she found lots in common with.
"this should be fun," thought the princess,
"until I get bored again."
they talked, they laughed, they enjoyed each other
and the princess waited to be bored.

they'd created inside jokes,
and she discovered he'd been raised similar to her,
with the same comfort foods,
same music, same entertainment, same tastes,
and she never stopped laughing and smiling.
he made her simply happy, and she never thought,
never considered it might last.

the princess waited for the prince
to reveal something she didn't like,
to stop talking, to not share an interest,
to treat her wrong, to do something wrong,
but every time something went wrong,
she discovered it was her fault.
the only thing holding them back was her.

so she talked to the prince.
she talked to her parents, and they told her
that this was an impossible thing,
that he lived too far away,
that this would never last, it would never work,
for true love does not exist.
and she was devastated.

if there was not one person for her
in the world, one person worth waiting for,
what had she been doing her entire life?
no one had struck her fancy before he,
no one had caught her eye for more than a moment,
and everyone else had let her down,
even her own flesh and blood.

she locked herself away, confused and hurt,
tearing her hair out, writing on the walls
when she ran out of paper, scratching with her nails
when she ran out of pencils, and the only thing
that would save her from herself was her prince's image,
the thought of his laugh, his voice,
his eyes that enchanted her.

she had found what she had never expected to find,
could care less where he was from,
where he was going, where he was living.
she'd been raised a skeptic, with no hope
for the true love, the soulmates,
the prince of her dreams that she heard of
in all the fairy tales - for they were just stories.

now that she was presented with this truth,
and the king and queen were still cynical,
she could do nothing but choke back her tears
and pray to a god she didn't believe in.
the image of the prince was all that would save her
from giving into her own darkness,
but even he couldn't cling that tightly.

Even he couldn't cling that tightly.