šÆļøš FAIRYTALE REJECT
How do I get seen in a world where my longing is now illegal?
Where fire is feminist blasphemy, and a woman who wants a man is called brainwashed instead of brave.
I want him.
Not for his polish. But for the very things they shame: the broad shoulders, the fumbling honesty, the confused silence before he says the wrong thing, and means the right one. And keeps trying.
How do I let him know I still remember the stories. The ones they laugh at now. Where the brute who could crush a skull with one hand carved out space in his ribcage to hold the ache of the woman he loved more than himself. And bled for her.
Not in metaphor. In war.
How do I say: I still want that?
Not hashtags. Not sterile flirtation. Not āmutual partnershipsā where no one leads, and no one dies for anything.
I want a man who would slaughter a thousand beasts because I cried. Who would die before letting my tears touch the ground alone.
But how do I say this in a sisterhood where blood is no longer sacred unless it's on the battlefield of corporate ambition? Where the cold hands of Father Time wrap around our ovaries like ivy around gravestones, and the labcoats come with freezer plans for futures we might never have the courage to thaw?
What do I do with this fairy tale still pulsing in my chest like an outlaw heartbeat?
Sometimes I wonder if I am doomed to die in the sister-circle of women who trained themselves to sneer at the very magic they once begged for as girls. Before the textbooks. Before the cubicles. Before the rage.
I kept mine. The story.
I kept him.
Even if heās still just a shadow in the fog of this sterile world.
I remember the boy with a beastās heart who flinched at nothingā except the pain in her eyes.
I want that.
Even if I have to stand alone to say it.
Even if he never comes.
Iāll die a romantic, with my battle cry tucked into the hem of my dress, still hoping for a man whose soul
remembers the tale too.
