I open the door and you’re there which is surprising and not. There’s an
awkward moment and I step back to let you in but you reach forward,
your thumb along my jaw and it fits like it always did and my head tilts
into your warm fingers like it always did; our open palms and eager mouths
and matching eyes are mirrors, and here we are. You say, I realized I love you. Then I
realize something for myself, which is: this is not real. My real life
is not a story, because stories aren’t real.

Nothing
against stories but the thing that is missing for me is the part where
they break from the existing narrative. The thing that is missing for
me is when somebody says: I don’t want to be a story. The thing I don’t
get is when he says he’s prince charming, when she says she’s actually a
princess; when they shed the toadskin and the ragged dress and instead
of stepping into something new they step into the promises that were
made to them by people who were frankly untrustworthy. I’m not saying
we have to go all fourth wall on everything; I’m wondering why people
keep building the same walls.

I mean, listen: I’m biased.
If I step into the story and stay, we know perfectly well what happens. I
chop off my heels to try to be what he wants and when he finds out he
doesn’t say, oh the sacrifices you made for me. When he finds
out he says, hey actually I think I love your your sister; let’s
turn the carriage around and get her. So I have maybe less than the
usual desire to participate. I’m acknowledging that. If you think I
didn’t want him; if you think I didn’t burn for the prince same as
everyone it’s because I lied about it, because I knew how it would go
and where it would end.

So yes I am predisposed to hating
the walls, hating the story, hating all of that; out of
self-preservation if nothing else. I see that. I used all my power of
myth and wore out my dancing shoes, sewed nettles with my bleeding
hands, and then ran and escaped across the bridge of one hair instead. I
never expected a white horse or your prodigal love. And I took myself
out of the story long ago.