Clearly he didn’t care in the way he professed
and I have to remind myself
that his fingers are caressing lies onto the curve of my back
and his voice is only weaving fairytales.

God but I would love to be his Belle –

My denial runs rampant, fecund
breeding these ludicrous fabricated futures
where I am cast as the girl who rescues him from his beast,
his animal interior,
where I fall into his arms before the last rose petal falls to the ground
and seals his fate.

Part of me knows it is Disney-delirium.
The sensible voice cries: you can’t help that his animal incarnate is an ass!
I frown, pause, fail to consider. “The polite term is really donkey nowadays.
And that isn’t much of a beast”

It makes no difference.
My conscious fails to subjugate that which dashes, scampers, runs wild beneath it,
emotions epidemic in the undercurrents
their influence unsolicited but now unavoidable.

So sadly predictable how his lying fingers are now lodged in my heart.