You look so like a swift strong someone

out of a storybook

(almost real, almost real)

but all your fine features are marked fragile

and I am afraid to touch you

for fear you will break from embarrassment.

You say you are like the proverbial bull in the china shop

but it seems to me that you are more the china

and I the bull,

so crude and loud and unrefined

bulling my way through life,

and you such perfect treasure,

wobbling as I thunder around you.

So priceless you seem,

Why aren't there

buyers and traders and thieves after you

and

Who am I?

to make you laugh or hold onto your arm

or invite you up to my patchwork room

for a chat?

And everybody must want you

but it is you alone who want me.

(Beauty and Beast matches have been fabled to work

but I'd prefer it if nobody called you beauty

except this beast.)