i.

(this is what the storyteller tells you)

 

he makes you laugh.

your smile stretches and splits and laughter erupts from your throat like champagne bubbles,

a meteor shower of happiness pouring from your nose and the corners of your lip,

brazen liquid courage slipping through the cracks on the wall, 

the doors of the fortress flung open in traitorous welcome and the battlement empty, 

and in its wake you relinquish the fight you've caged in your chest.

 

in the end, giving in is as easy as breathing.

 

 

ii.

(they live happily ever after.)

 

you are young,

and something about it seems like a story, sweet nothings waltzing off the page and onto your feet

and you dance on word slippers cracking into letters with every step,  rose-tinted ballroom shaking, 

quivering under its weight because nothing

nothing is more fragile than paper, than words, than the things that remain unsaid

and the things that need saying, so you dance and you never stop dancing because you know

no love lasts forever,

no love is meant to be,

no love can be called a victory

 

(because)

 

 

iii. 

(this is what they don't tell you)

 

you wage wars every day over little things, which bin to put the socks in,

dispatching armies over whether the food is thoroughly cooked, you volley

snappish remarks like arrows over the parapet,

champagne bubbles souring and condensing into acid rain on your tongue,

you're not happy, not all the time,

sometimes you are right, and sometimes you're wrong.

 

(but)

 

iv. 

at midnight, the siege always ends.

he apologizes or you do; it doesn't matter who's pride is the bitter pill,

because no one is absolutely good, and no one is absolutely evil, 

and life is happy sometimes, and sad sometimes,

and maybe love doesn't last forever but it lasts now -

it lasts in the way he agrees to pick up the socks, and the way she agrees

to add more salt next time, the way they hold hands despite the jagged edges 

in the space between their fingers, despite the darkness they hold in their hearts,

despite the anger and the wrongs and the incompatibilities because no one is perfect,

everyone is ugly and ridiculous and kind and warm

but he tries and she tries because there it is -

 

Love.

 

v.

surrender is not the absence of grit from either side.

rather, it is overcoming one's pride for the sake of love.