A Letter to the Princess

We met where the hours bent themselves under lamplight at the edge of town,
listening to the strange winds that came from the Everfree
to greet us.

You said you wanted to build a castle there
in a place where summer would always
pass us by
if we blinked or turned our heads
too fast.

And when I asked you who would live in such a place, you faced me and
everything about you suddenly
blended and became
indistinguishable from the night as you said
“You, me, and whatever ghosts want to join us.”

I wish I could have taken the world for you without worry of fragility,
but more things were made out of glass than we realized.

I am too old to stop crying anymore.

It is a shame that tears are only ever pulled towards the earth.

At what point did misery and prophecy become
two stars
orbiting the same meaning?

I don’t remember anymore. Maybe that’s the way it always was.

Time is no longer something that can be
wielded by somepony my age.

Time is a betrayer.

A thief of all things.

How frivolously I used to let it pass by like a spring breeze, unconcerned by its untamable nature.

The concept of mercy could not have come from the gods,
for never once have they employed it in any of their divine and terrible acts
upon the earth,
nor will they bow their heads
low enough to those who created it in the wake of their
infinite cruelty.

It was you who taught me which stars in the night sky had already died.

I used to watch you sew those slivers of dead light
into marvelous tales.

Fallen heroes, defiant lovers, all the untold moments of history—no fable could escape your celestial tapestry.

I will never forget the evening you dared to hang
our story in the heavens.

For a gleaming, defiant moment,
I was the night alongside you.

But then, like all of your creations, you
plucked
them
apart,
slowly bringing their existence to a soft end because you said beautiful things shouldn’t last forever

We both knew you were wrong,
but the shadow of an agreement
hardly changes things

Your sister does not have your artistry, lover.
She has only mastered one star while you herded them by the
thousands

The evenings are reluctant to hand off their
burning oranges and pinks to soothing blues and purples.
The sky bruises easily
without your delicate touch.

They’ve hidden you down here, lover—
passed around your tale through enough lips to atomize it into myth.
You are a bedtime story for foals.
I fear that soon your name will conjure nothing
but tilted heads

Oh, how I used to envy those who could choose to
forget you.
What a divine power that must be to
wipe away sorrows
so utterly,
so conveniently.
How is it that trauma
evaporates from some and builds
monuments in others?

The sound of your voice
haunted me in your absence
at first.

It followed me like a stray dog throughout the day
and curled up pathetically at the doorstep
of my heart
when I slept,
always ready to greet me after a
dreamless night.

It begged for scraps of memories to indulge in.
It begged me to remember how your hushed kindness
swaddled itself in my ears.

My fury demanded that I starve my need for
nostalgia out of myself.
But fury always left me faster
than you,
lover.

I yearn for your words now.

To tell me how—wizened by a tower of lifetimes—you burned your
own promises to ash
without me by your side

Anger and resentment have run their course, pillaged what they will.
The empires they built inside of me
fell years ago

I have only phantoms to cling to.

I imagine that I am as barren as your moon by now.
I miss opening my eyes to nothing but you.

I am losing my thoughts, lover.
The air is no longer familiar to me.

I no longer dream of your planets, your
orbiting bodies

Perhaps it is for the best that the sinew that connected us
is degrading.

We were kept such a secret that there was nobody to comfort me
for my loss—a pain we both share, I’m sure.

There is a sigh inside my heart that will never escape.
There is nobody to listen to the quietest of my feelings.

The bell of desolation rings twofold in a broken heart.

Out of all the philosophies we discussed, we never
wondered what becomes of a life
that has carved out so many spaces for another to
rest inside of.

Being the only broken piece that doesn’t fit into a mosaic of a thousand broken pieces.
If there is a god of sorrow,
they are certainly a master of their craft.

Suspend this grief and I will
fly myself
to the moon for you.

My bones feel lighter nowadays.
Sometimes,
when I am resting among the clouds,
it feels like I might
break apart
alongside them with each peaceless dawn.

Love,
I have burned
a thousand
of these letters.

It is the only way to make my words
follow you,
and I know you said that prayers said aloud
merely turn into wishes

I think I will let the wind carry this one,
just once, lover,
and
believe it to fly itself
to the moon,

just to ease these
cravings
for a miracle.

It is time to lay these dreams to rest.
To forbid the ground to crumble ‘round them and mistakenly unearth
a more painful form of hope.

So I will give you now my final commitment.

That if you ever return,
and are wondering where I’ve
gone,
that you will find me in that castle, my love.

It never did become a place for just
the two of us,
but I am sure you will feel at home there with
me
and the rest of those ghosts we invited all those
years ago.