"Song"

[butterflydreaming]

.Song.

I have been crowned with a tiara,
but even on my jeweled days
the tigers steal my finery.
Eyes like emeralds, teeth like ivory,
they come out of the darkness to rend and tear
the silk of my dreams with its fragile seams,
and naked in an unkind jungle I am left
to find an ending for the fairytale of me,
the fable in which my history is dressed.

You shouldn't follow where my foxfire leads.
It doesn't burn to illuminate your way
or give you heat with its phantom light.
The folklore that is familiar will reveal
that when you get close, my beauty falls away,
so leave me cackling in the river reeds,
spitting curses at the empty night.

You crown me with a flower at my ear.
Now do I owe your promise
to the monster in the castle maze?
My tears of diamonds, falling in the amber light,
don't pay for release or for a measure of peace
or passage across the river.
You aren't putting my mythology to rest
or keeping me from the calling of the waves
if you steal my sealskin and lock it in a chest;
You are putting my immortality in a grave.

I already know to make the tigers run,
their melted gold like straw, so pretty;
I know a kiss can break a spell,
and I've already slept for a century,
but when I give you my secrets
it's not your story to tell.
You might have the details wrong
because I'm not the princess.