little beast

“

You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?
A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing.
                 Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on.
What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.
           Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly
                                                                                              flames everywhere.
I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,
               that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon.
I’m not the princess either.
                          Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
              I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow
        glass, but that comes later.
                                                           And the part where I push you
flush against the wall and every part of your body rubs against the bricks,
           shut up
I’m getting to it.
                                   For a while I thought I was the dragon.
I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was
                                                                                               the princess,
cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,
         young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with
confidence
           but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,
while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,
                                                              and getting stabbed to death.
                                   Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal.
         You still get to be the hero.

— Richard Siken, excerpt from Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out (via parttimeliar)