when college ends and my books are well paid

and my mother wonders if she'll see me again

i don't talk to any old high school friends

and the one i love now is holding other hands

i don't mind i just hope their smile never ends

when I forget the way my depression sweater feels

and i no longer need fire to heal

and my hands stay manicured and clean

when i'm all alone, all i support is myself

im not sure if that will always be

and wealth is gained

for spirit

for love

for joy

for rain

my success is looked up to by little girls

envied by my father pitiful words

the ones like chains i one day will break

my dark brown eyes, now mud and stone, now soft

maybe by someone i will forever call my own

maybe a child, whose name i don't yet know

at least a decade before my parents see me come home

not for their love, nor that i miss their hold

not like i can remember, those memories are old

i tell them i'm better than they are or ever will be

and for them to hear and know i'm speaking honestly

my future i can not fully see

the farther i look, the hazier it will be

like rain-stained glass

you can see, but it's still blurry

As children we are taught fairy-tales

Princes saving princesses

Princes battling the evil for us

And we live happily ever after

Yet Disney has never shown us what "Happily Ever After" looks like,

just a drive into the sunset

or a few happy montage moments

As children we are asked what we want to be when we grow up

Then we are told a bunch of facts about said desire

Then we continue our schooling

And "grow up" to reach something "more realistic"

Something that will make us money

And support the country

But are we happy?

Some of us, yes

Do we get the partner?

Some of us, yes

Do we enjoy life?

Some of us, yes

As a child, I never thought that

All I would want was to feel safe where I slept

Where I lived

Where I breathed.

That instead of all my dreams coming true,

every day would be a nightmare come to life

But now,

sitting at this computer to escape my current reality,

I somehow still want the prince/princess

I want to fight their villains and they fight mine

I want to ride into the sunset with them in a carriage

But I also want to fight with them without feeling scared or unsafe

I want to hurt with them, and we hold one another

I want us to learn from our flaws together

I want us to be healthy, and truly happy

A companion

What a happily ever after that would be

Bailey’s been chained to the fence for hours. She’s all I can think about. Well, other than him of course.

Outside the window, I can’t even see one star twinkling in the cold October sky.

Hot tears fill my eyes and I fight hard to quietly blink them away. Hiding my face behind a curtain of my long blonde hair, I desperately search for a distraction. Him. It’s always him.

Perched on the edge of my chair across the table from Lucas, I blush when he catches me staring into his bottle-green eyes and, when I feel the heat bloom across my cheeks, I lower my gaze to his calloused hands stained with grease and motor oil. Lucas fixes cars for a living, and I’ve been told he makes money hand over fist, even though he’s only nineteen.

My moment’s slashed away when a guttural bellowing makes me flinch.

“Somebody go kick that mongrel in the head and tell it to stop its damn barking.”

When earlier today my Aunt Vera returned on her loud motorcycle madder than a swatted hornet, because the newly inked scorpion on her giant hip didn’t turn out the way she wanted, it was like sticks of dynamite blew up our house. Which is also her house, technically, because she hasn’t any place to live and my mom, her older sister, took mercy on her and invited her to stay with us.

Indefinitely.

One night I dreamt the Harley she straddles, like a cow on top of a mound of manure, sent her wheeling into the air, high above the moon, and then crashed into her green, brown, and rust‑orange body as it landed back down to earth, onto the pavement.

I sobbed when I woke up.

But at least Lucas is here having Thanksgiving dinner with my family of fourteen parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and second cousins. No kids though. Aside from me, they’re all adults ranging from the ages of thirty-eight to sixty-two. Except Lucas of course, but he doesn’t count because he’s in no way related to any of us.

Lucky him.

I watch half-heartedly as he shuffles his deck of playing cards, fanning them out, turning them over in his palms, cutting them in half and waving them in front of people’s faces.

“Please sign your name right across this ten of spades Mrs. Dixit,” Lucas tells my mom.

He slides the card into the middle of a full deck, snugly into the depths of it, packs it in so it’s swallowed up, hidden. Then he immediately pulls a card off the top of the deck, turns it faceup, and shows us that it’s my mom’s card. There are oohs and ahhs all around.

He then folds it in half, putting a bend into that signed ten of spades and shows everyone the slight dip when he places it flat onto his hand. We can all see the card is now signed and bent. He asks my mom to slip it randomly somewhere in the very center of the deck. Again, he uses one finger to pull it off the top of the deck. Same signed and bent card.

Eyes open wide, lips curve upwards, they all want more.

Aunt Vera is sprawled out in a chair right next to me, her long, massive legs stretched wide underneath the table, her rancid sweat glistening on her upper lip. Fascinated by Lucas’s card tricks, she seems to have forgotten about my little dog.

Bailey is a mini-Eskimo with the softest, most kissable fur I’ve been pressing my lips to since I was ten years old. I’m sixteen now.

I continue watching as my uncle reluctantly tears a big chunk off the corner of a twenty-dollar bill. Lucas takes that corner piece and eats it, he literally chews it up, and swallows it down. He then places that same twenty in his mouth where the tear is.

When he slowly pulls it out, voila, the corner is back. The bill is intact once again.

“How the fuck did you do that, you snot-nosed kid?”

Butterfly wings flap like crazy in my stomach. Aunt Vera is going to be relentless now.

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” Lucas winks, placing her under the hypnosis of those exquisite eyes.

“But don’t worry Ms. Dankworth,” he says, “there’s much more to see, so relax and prepare to be entertained,” he points to our family room with rows of chairs and a makeshift stage we set up earlier today.

Just like magic, Aunt Vera shuts her mouth for once.

Dinner winds down and Donna, our housekeeper, clears away dishes and offers coffee, dessert, or brandy. Everyone agrees they’re full and will wait until after the performance.

I barely touched my food.

Yesterday, I hid outside, watching in horror at the things my aunt did in our kitchen.

She placed a bowl of dogfood on the floor and when Bailey began eating, Vera’s leg shot out and kicked her right in the face. My angel squealed in pain and jumped back.

Before I could react, Aunt Vera offered the food again. This time when Bailey timidly approached the dish, she roared and kicked her in the ribs. That’s when I barged in, begging her to stop like my life depended on it.

“We were just playin’, weren’t we, mutt?” she cooed like she’d done nothing wrong.

“I’m just tryin’ to teach it obedience Jaimie, don’t be such a baby.”

I shudder at the memory and my tears fall again when snowflakes dance down from the moonless sky.

For his next trick, Lucas asks quote the most beautiful girl in the room, Miss Jaimie Dixit to assist him on the mock stage. I walk carefully so as not to trip over my own two feet.

Lucas requests the assistance of six volunteers and has me place them all behind the black curtain.

“My dear guests, tonight for my next magic trick, I feel like I need a mesmerizing and lovely shot of inspiration,” he announces, his voice so deep and smooth, I want to savor it.

It’s my turn to be spellbound when he pulls me in.

Something bubbly shoots through my stomach and a tenderness bounces like sunlight along the surface of my skin. His lips brush mine and his tongue pirouettes in my mouth. I’m dizzy with rivers of champagne fizzing through my bloodstream. It’s my very first kiss, my sweet-sixteen kiss. It’s daring and warm, and I never want it to end.

Sadly though, the show must go on, I can hear the din of various reactions mixed with impatience resonating from the audience.

Amidst all of that, I’m suddenly reminded that the tips of Bailey’s ears and her sweet little paws could be frostbitten by now.

My heart is no longer in the magic though I do my part until Lucas opens the curtain to reveal all six volunteers… gone.

“Where are they?” asks my grandfather, wheezing with concern.

“They’re ok sir. Everyone, please come down now,” Lucas calls out and, one by one, they descend our spiral staircase.

But someone’s missing.

A search of the entire house turns up nothing, she’s nowhere to be found.

“Lucas, can you make her reappear, dear?” asks my mother.

“I’m afraid not Ma’am, I’m pretty sure this might be… permanent. Unless maybe she just went for a bike ride…?”

“Maybe,” says my mom absentmindedly.

There’s a lightness in her voice when she claps her hands and sing-songs “Now, who’d like coffee and dessert? And Donna, could you please go fetch our darling Bailey from the backyard, and feed her the turkey leftovers in the kitchen by the warmth of the fireplace?”

the day I met you

my life changed forever

when we said I do

how were we to know

the places we would go

moving here, moving there

four states and many years later

we are still together

still more memories to make

look forward to retirement with you

our happy ever after

What is it that I look? What is it that people look? A story of how they end up happy and with their true love? Is that what I want?

My happily ever after is lost somewhere among different universes, which means I may or may not have multiple happy endings. So does everyone! I know I want a happy ending in this real life and not only in this other universe, but, the real question here is, what or how my happily ever after will be like? Do I get to choose? Do my actions bring it to me? Do I chase it or do I pretend to be in a fairy tale where my three fairy god mothers will look after me and make me beautiful so I can dance with my prince charming and fall in love and pretend I am like Cinderella?

The truth is that I would love to be Cinderella, or any other princess who got her happily ever after. I wish for my happily ever after would be a fairy tale. A tale where I get to be a girl who never found her path in this world and that she is all alone, while in the other side of that world there is a chance of dreams to come true, a prince charming or a beast, three fairy god mothers to look after me secretly and the mean sisters and mom and a secret life of me being the princess daughter that the king and queen never knew her existence. Or maybe I can be the one who is trapped in a glass house with no escape, except from the one who will be brave enough to save me.

As you see I have a multiple of choices for how my happily ever after want to be, but no one of those would be real. Because I am a person who never had that, maybe tried to have it but never made it there and never will. You wonder why would I say that! Well, the truth is that I don't believe in happy endings but I always wanted to have one! One that would be so amazing and beautiful to watch. So yes I have a happy ever after but never dared to dream or think of it cause it scares me so much.

I did said that I may or may not have multiple endings. See we only know this planet, Earth where human beings can talk, walk, think etc., but what if there is other planets we do know the existence? Would I(we) have a happily ever after there? Would I (we) end up with the same people or have the same life? I like to believe that in those other another lives we have the happy endings we want, I want.

So my happily ever after is that I dream of being a girl who loves books, poems and writing a tons of stories that never came out.I get to travel a lot and that I meet my prince charming by accident or that he saves me from something, or in a library looking at me and falling in love so we get to be together. But before all that, the first that happens is that I dream of being a girl who lost the person she loved in this world and she was suddenly alone and broken and found somehow herself having help by writing down fiction stories of alternative ways her loved ones are alive and happy while she dies. I picture a girl fighting with her own demons because sadness is the only thing she knows in her life and she finds her happily ever after up in the clouds, being an angel, a guardian angel so she can protect the ones she love. I see a lonely girl, always a sad girl trying her very best for anyone else with asking nothing or need or take not a thing.

~ THE END ~

We talked about it, remember? We would live in a house with a mountain view; green and blue, cold weather, and us snuggling under the blanket. I haven't told you about it, but I hope we have big windows and perhaps a balcony so I can spend my mornings just to stare at the view. We can drink coffee-or tea, in my case-together once you wake up, then enjoy the silence. After that, we will go down to the kitchen and try cooking together until I skip some steps, or you decide bothering me is more fun than cooking. Of course you won't say it's 'bothering', because you love me and you can't keep your hands off to yourself.

It's such a simple life, but something we would want for the rest of our lives.

It's more than enough to fulfill our happily ever after.

Walking to my car

After a job well done.

Head held high, shoulders back, a grin on my face

Knowing that this isn't for everyone.

I stood in a field much like the one I had pictured, the golden straws and green wisps mixing together into rippling waves of grass - little buds poking up here and there, some opening up to the sunshine. Licking cracked lips, I squinted into the wind.

I'd wistfully visualized this place as a young girl, but I never imagined I'd find it 60 years later. I thought it'd always live in my head. But now, as this warm breeze pawed at my silvery hair and the extra fabric of my dress fluttered around my bony frame, I could scarcely take it all in.

Closing my eyes, I thought of all the dream-come-trues I'd experience thus far in my life- dreams that I'd never known my heart possessed in the first place.

I never got married. My boy-crazed teenage years had faded into a life of living among friends and family, never to stumble upon "true love" as they called it. But, unlike my young mind had portrayed a single life to look, I was not perpetually lovesick or always longing for a man. I'd been lonely at times, yes, but the joy I could find in untethered devotion to the Lord was planted in my tear-soaked youth, sprouted in the younger years of my womanhood, and bloomed as time stretched on.

Placing my hands on jagged hips, I looked down at myself for the first time since arriving at this meadow. Slowly, and through the floral material that made up the front of my dress, I traced the dips and wrinkles of my skin pooling around my stomach. A light smile settled on my face. This was the same body that, as a young girl, had revolted me so strongly. As an eight-year-old sitting cross-legged in her second-grade classroom, I'd decided my belly was too rolly. The list of dislikes had grown until I could barely stand living in myself, and then, at 16, the disordered eating of my young teenage years had taken a sharp turn into an eating disorder.

I remembered, I remembered. It racked my family and my faith in God. My first round of treatment went well until I broke up with my boyfriend, after which I faltered and plunged back into the eating disorder. Nevertheless, my trust and knowledge of this Man who died in my place, Jesus Christ Himself, grew throughout this time, and my second round of treatment was different. I knew He loved me. I'd always known that, but this time, I held onto it. And finally, softly -and over the days, months, and years- His love seeped deep enough into my soul that it penetrated the part of me that hated my appearance so badly. The part that needed to control the food I ate to be okay.

That's when I began to walk in freedom, my weight and shape growing and changing with time, but Jesus' love for me AND my body giving me a reason to nourish myself even when I did not want to. That's not to say I never looked back, but here I was, 75 years old, and able to gaze behind me and see a life lived, by God's mercy, NOT centered on a need to look a certain way, but freed. I was free to walk in His good purpose for me, no matter what a mirror revealed to me or numbers blinked back at me on a scale. I'd found joy again.

Sighing, and back in the present moment, I began taking high steps through the grass. My ankle gave way, and I tumbled down, but through the pain of my aching bones hitting the dirt, I laughed. It would not be this way forever. Each birthday it became more apparent that my greatest dream would really come true someday. Seeing this field today, I could perceive only one thing missing. It was Jesus- in physical form, walking beside me. And that, my friend, is when my happily-ever-after will truly begin.

I melt at his touch whenever he slips the shoes from my feet...among other clothing items.

He makes my skin green with greed for every inch of him.

He's a tall glass of water, and all I want to do is submerge myself. But when I pour myself into him, I never sink. He always floats me.

Guess I've failed the witch trials.