The prince.

Published on July 2019

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He grew up believing he would save her. It was all laid out neatly like snow falling on a winter’s morning. He was never to have any problems. Always be firm and strong, his mother and father would always say. Crying’s not for the prince.

He grew up believing he would travel through days and nights, fight the hot and cold, he would never complain, and he would find the girl. She’d be perfect. Selfless and helpless, needy but not too much, dependant but not overly. Beauty of the natural kind, the classy kind.

He would save her. Knight in shining armor.

He stopped believing the day he cried alone in the dark for the first time. Saving someone seemed impossible. Wasn’t he meant to be strong? He wiped the tears away and kept on pretending. Pretending he believed he would find a princess to depend on him. Too smart,

too funny, too ugly, too pretty, too too too too. He would never save anyone. Nobody would come save him.

He grew up believing too much and ended up believing too little. Man up, they tell him, save the girl. Sometimes he still cries alone in the dark. Hidden from the neatness and the snow, buried in the chaos of his mind