Dragons or Princesses

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” Rainer Marie Rilke

I'm not jaded enough to read this quote without feeling some tug from the wounded depths of my shattered pride. It's almost a little too close to the truth. If Rilke was alive I'd have to go punch his face for exposing me in my skid marked underwear in 7th grade picking my bookbag up off the ground as the pretty girls laughed in knee socks and Rick Springfield T-shirts, knowing that if I didn't make friends with the dragons I'd be alone forever and now after decades of feeding these dragons I've begun to pretend to myself they are princesses...to whisper lies to myself to sleep in my masturbatory wet dreams...alone and wasting away, broken, cultivating a damn private SPCA exclusively for dragons.

But who am I to cry with a belly full of half cooked raw meat and day old crumb cake from the mass produced dungeons in Walmart?