A Grim Fairy Tale

Timed upon a once
A runaway prince named Boy
Tried his valiant best at
balming his battered insides
By raising the drawbridge to him and putting frost and fear and bitterness of old
On patrol at the gates of
His coldest, darkest, stoniest center
Where Boy stored safe his warmth’s molten core.
Dressed forever for a wake
Boy turn’d his time into the a staccato brawling
Between two causes to cringe.

Fate brought the girl named She to town on crutches
in the back of a wagon And
in the wake of a mistake
Crippled, bruised and blue from the lifelessness
That breeds in the cold void left behind
When scabs
camouflage egos under sheep-skins of courage and imaginary acts of compassion
and tell convincing enough lies
of the walk to something eventual
being
too much of an effort
to put in.

The chill fanned She’s make-believe frostbite
And the hail added brick and mortar to her
invisible igloo.
Though She hollered on about the brightness of her blueness
And showed off her snowball-juggling parlour tricks
Boy saw how She’s teeth chattered and lips cracked
How She’s tears had
Welded the sides of her eyes open
Keeping She from sleep
and so from dreams

It made Boy weep
To see She con a smile
His ears rang and ached
When She’s laughing resonated and bounced off snowflakes
For the eyes of Boy saw through the vapid watercolours
With which She had done up
The whiteness in her lies

No thought was put into it
No consequences were considered
And though the act flashed with glimmers of hoping selfishness
Nothing seemed to matter
But to give her a feel of the ground beneath her
Shattered feet
again
For of the many paths
One could lead to him

So he reached inside
Butterknifed through the icicle-cage
And fished out all his red sheen.
He lay it at her lifeless soles

She could have She should have
They could have They would have
They can have They will have?

For In the end
The cold should never be allowed to win