Running up the stairs, birds without wings could falter better.
“Stop” She has to turn, address the stern voice and newly empty eyes.
A once happy face, now clouded in shadow, speaks with no conviction;
“Walk up the stairs like a lady, please”
The troublett turns around, rolling eyes in secret faces, walking with a serene tilt, faking societies smile.
As soon as feet are hidden well, they fly off once again.
Servants understand the urge, to rebel against dusty chains.
They smile as she dashes by.
I figure, dark and handsome gold, ahead around the corner.
Collisions equal loud hysteria, but then strong hands stop fall.
“John!” The delighted shout falls from cherry lips, as porcelain cheeks blush red.
He smiles the way he knows makes her heart die, and steadies her shaking arms.
“What are you doing here?”
He hides the sadness behind his mouth, and smiles with true charisma.
“The floor was chipped, and I was by, outside the window there”
He gesturers to a crystal view, a tree and flowers through the frame.
“Your aunt called me inside, offered a price for my hands”
He knew it would only put a small dent in the hunger, a slight rise in the money bucket, a tiny lift in the smile.
But it was better then nothing, though nothing was always stalking his shadow.
The girl understood the shirk behind his tan and nodded with a heartfelt whisper.
He reached his hand out to touch her shoulder, but tradition stopped him with a slap in the face from fate.
He restrained his love and shoved it under his hat, hoping she hadn’t seen it for that split second in his eyes.
An orphan, servant, a boy.
Nothing more then another face to them with stacks of gold behind their dresses.
So he bowed and lowered his eyes, then walked away with quiet footsteps.
And she didn’t really understand why he always faltered.
But hats and pretty things waited in her sunshine room, so she forgot his callused fingers for a few hours, just as he had feared.
But she was just a girl, in a fancy house, with smiles directed at her every whim.
And he was just a boy, in the streets, with a dirty smile and a pair of pants that where too small.
But somehow they understood each other, and when they snuck out and watched the stars on the roof, sometimes he would take her hands just because he could.
And the smoothness of her palm made him forget just how rusty he was.
And he was happy, for a second in time, as she fought the growing urge to be close to him.
Because her heart didn’t agree with her head, and battles are casualties waiting to happen.
But they took the risk, and they made the jump, and they went swimming together on hot summer days and didn’t give a second thought to if it was right or wrong, because in their eyes love is always right, even when it is distorted.
And they hoped it would never end, and when the sun finally ran and hid, they understood that the stars needed their own chance to shine.
And then one day someone found out, and their where angry voices and angry fists and angry skies.
And they took him away, because they didn’t understand that they needed each other and their lives where different but their eyes where the same.
He was cold and it was damp in the cell they threw him to.
When summer ended and winter grabbed at the town, she cried at her window and wondered if he blamed her.
And she would pick pansies, and roses, and tulips and sprinkle them on her bed so she could smell like spring and remember.
Hysteria cried and enchantment ran and gargoyles snuck into their dreams and ripped their sleep apart.
And when their hearts lay on the ground in shreds and nobody but the wind cared, they fought for a glimpse of each other.
But cruel hands and cruel laws where stronger then her longing fingers,
Whilst cruel slaps and cruel bars kept him from grasping her golden hair.
And that’s all he dreamed of.
He would drowned in it, her scent, her flaxen silk.
That was before the monsters came and took away his sweet memories, and reminded him how cold he was.
His soul was chipped at the edges.
Her soul was abandoned and bruised.
She sat on the edge of eternity, confused and dazed.
Wondering why they said he was so different, and grasping at a hope of light.
They where so strong, and she was so small and weak.
Her eyes where immovable and steel, but it wasn’t enough to draw him back to her.
Because forbidden fruits bit the hardest.
He drew in every breath and though of her face, and it gave him strength to think that she was breathing too.
Days went by, each seeming like a needle in his skin.
Farther and farther away he drew from sanity.
But glimpses of the sun kept his hoping and dreaming of summer coming again.
Thought ran around in her head, fighting with each other. Innocent and evil, pondering the existence of laws and reason and sunshine and rain.
Because the rain felt like his tears, but the sun felt like his embrace and she could never figure out which was better and what weather she should pray for.
So one day she grabbed it, a pendent of silver, from arms that itched to tough her.
Guards never knowing, never guessing that the pretty little shadow was not so golden after all.
Keys jingling, bars grating, prison mates laughing and jeering at her figure as she walked by
“Sweet little thing, come give me a something”
She crept into desolation and found him, curled in a ball and whispering her name with tortured breaths.
Breaking him out of prison cell, it was easier then breaking his heart or breaking his from his insanity.
Because he clung to both like a starving bird.
Skin and bones, nails and fingers,
Dirty hair and dirty eyes.
But he held her hands and fallowed her to daylight.
Clinging to her lavender overskirt and sucking in her vanilla scent, he had found paradise again.
She threw him into a hiding shadow and drove him away from looking eyes and gossiping tongues and busybody faces.
And when they had reached the country and freed the gray horses to run wild, he still hadn’t separated dreams from reality.
And she clung to him and slapped him and begged him to believe in life again.
But sunlight only hurts and made him cry.
It ached to see him break, but she had something to fling at last.
Breaking rules made her strong again, but it broke her soul as well.
She had never seen him cry, and it fascinated her, and make her cry as well.
She grabbed his head and held it tight, while her fingers played with boyish curls.
Soft and springing, she remembered the days gone by.
At last he spoke, and his voice was chapped.
“I thought my life was gone. Without you I am nothing but a shape.”
And she understood what he meant and finally grasped the sacrifices that he made.
It made her weep from shame and longing and beloved thoughts of serenity.
And he wanted her to hold him again so badly, but her understood the need to whip away his own tears.
So he held them away from his face and watched how they danced like crystals on her fingers.
And finally when he understood himself and why he was changing, he found her willow soul and held it gently.
He wiped away her face, leaving dirty smudges from his aching fingers.
He knew the meaning of work, the meaning of pain, the meaning of love.
Then they both woke up from their shock induced sleep and laughed at the butterflies and held hands and kissed like it was the last day on earth.
And the trees looked on and watched two souls become one, and they understood how rich and poor mattered not when it came to the heart.
Difference ranted and raved, but their ears where closed.
And once again the summer sprang upon a new day, and happy faces tried to forget past hardships.
And he wanted to touch her and remember just how her skin felt, and she wanted to find his smile again and the nails that he stuck in his pockets for working.
And they didn’t care about the sirens in town, and the stricken face of her family.
They just ran and fell and jumped and flew until their where gone and there and never again forgotten.
And the stars finally shone for them and them alone.