Heroes and Thieves

I remember those sticky California nights when the angels would grace my window
And soothe my beating heart to bed tonight, with stories about David and Solomon
Hoping one day I too would be as brave and fearless as the many heroes before me.
And while my grandmother sang praises and my mother’s prayers filled the room
With hands so tight the sweat stained my sheets with her sacred brand of holy water,
Her own sacred spells sending me off into the wonders of my imagination—the night
The dark blanket covered over me like wool as Disney’s lies slid under and into my mind
And just like every other foolish girl, I kept my fingers crossed waiting for some Prince
That same he who’d come into my chambers and rescue a love-torn me. Save me sweet.
On nights like these when the wind gently danced across the window pane of my heart
And the sky blew into my fantasies the simplest love poisoned potion promising forever
I drafted the sketch of the same he—that same you—who might someday rob me away.

But greater days and greater pains fell upon me as high school hit me like concrete
While the fall never quite broke and my lungs begged for the oxygen I’d granted away
To candied cigarettes and tightly rolled brown paper filled with half-empty promises
and crowded smoke.
You crept into my space like a hero intending to save me—or was it to learn me?
Either way, you had earned me gained me, and maybe even loved me. Saved me and
broke me.
You breathed me in and took me, off into the night on a magic carpet ride
Under the sea and beneath the tide, into your castle and we waltzed on, into the tower
awaiting your kiss, away with the dragons and into your midst.
And forever and always I was yours.
Thoroughly and naively prepared to run away into the darkness of your energy
The shadows of your word, the cool air of your touch, the deception of your eyes.
Wholly and willing yours. So much so I cast away myself to breathe you, exhaled my
sanity to see you, pushed away my mind to know you
Half as well as you could clearly see me. And as I gave you my dying breath
Like a thief in the night you ran off with my heart, my soul, and all.
Broken, yet not quite defeated, I rose. Searched through the maze and lost my fate.

Six years too late, I heard wedding bells in the distant with some stranger in my dress:
The thief in the tux.
And while my tears cried oceans, river, and planets full, I heard you whisper faintly,
“I do.”
My hands, shaking, my mind, breaking, my heart, begging.
Begging that somehow this dream, this prophecy might fail and come envious sunrise
You’d carry into the sky, hold me too tight, and promise me forever it’s alright.
And I pinched every pore until the unbearable truth saw through:
A hero or a thief? No more difference in sight than I’ll see tonight.
So take my heart and with my dreams, you’ll break it.
But if ever that ring should sit too heavy and your mind tempts you back to simpler times
Look into your locket and hope that there you still might find it:
A heart broken too soon, a dream rising by noon.