it’s

how you take my heart wringing

it out twisting and rearranging

and i start to search

for a prince in you all over again

 

how each year you switch

from frog to prince and each

time i reach for you you turn

amphibian all over again

 

how the thicket of thorns

grows thicker at my core

as i struggle to find

my way from your grasp all over again

 

how that thicket is confined

by my very mind as i dream

of someone saving me for good

from loving you all over again

 

and how you’re either so charming so good

or so wicked and if i could

only stop imagining you

in my image all over again

how i would find

you are not mine

you are merely a boy

and not a mirror

and not gay or on a wall

as i so often

make you say

all over again

 

it’s clearer

how the web i weave

is my own to leave

just as it was my own right

to make each year all over again

 

and it’s clearer

how the poisoned fruit

was mine to bite

i clasped my lie too tight

which is exactly why no one tried

stop me from doing it all over again

 

it’s clearer

how you never tried

to grasp me and i lied to myself

about you tearing up

my heart i cried all over again

i lied all over again

 

it’s clearer

how going to sleep

won’t magically keep our friendship alive

or make you kiss me bring me back to life again

nor will waking in my dream world and weeping

 

and nor will dreaming in my waking

world of what could have been

making fantasies and fairy tales of what we were

ruining what i knew for sure was real again

 

how i’m really not power

less and moreover this tower

is really not so tall even though

next to you i feel so small all over again

although you were the little one

 

how you were strong

but it was wrong for me

to imagine you stronger

and to imagine you for as long

as i did as someone you weren’t

with both the good and the bad

i saw in you as a reflection of me

when you weren’t the fairest of all

like i wanted you wanted myself to be

 

nor were you hiding in your clothing

and nor were you the huntsman

and nor was it my business loathing you

and at the same time trying

to save you from your supposedly froggy life

nor did good intentions and real emotions

excuse me from all the commotion i caused

crying wolf again and all over again when you weren’t

 

and the carriage turns pumpkin

and the clock strikes twelve

and the princess pricks her pretty finger

and i dive deeper to delve into my soul

 

and the ground i walk is knives

and i could kill you but that would kill me

and the mermaids dissolve to seafoam

and the huntsman brings back fake organs

 

and the glorious fish is eaten

and i can’t go to the ball

and the house falls in

and i drink the jar of blood

 

and the woman gives her firstborn son

and the pea is still so big

and the duckling is still so ugly

and the hay is still so much hay

 

and i’m so cold but i can’t burn the matches

and the slippers have fallen off

and of course she never thought about her hair

and the mirror mirror is a mere mirror

 

and since i'll never be your prince

i'll never be anyone's king

 

to freeze dead is a joyful thing

 

and the most joyful thing

and the most alarming

is that i don’t have to keep waiting

for you prince charming

not because i know you’re coming

but because i know you’re never coming

and you’re not coming to harm me

or warm me

to deform and form and reform me again

 

you’re not going to alarm me

nor charm me or disarm me

and sweep me off to the happily ever after end

because you just want to have keep a friend

 

and like back when

we can walk and talk

we can be

 

we can be who

we used to then

then

we can do it all over again

 

the prince charming i knew

might just as well be

in the belly of the whale

 

all the stuff of fantasy

and the stuff of fairy tales

which are never true