1fairytale ending.
general – gen, introspective – angst, tragedy
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When I was younger, my Mama used to—she can't, not anymore—tell me stories of princesses, of knights and princes, kisses that wake the princess from her eternal slumber. I remember them all, each and every one of them, because they are precious to me.
My Mama used to stuff me in between a hundred or so blankets when it was time for bed, kissing my forehead and whispering, "good night", before she read to me. She would smile as she opened the book on her lap, cushioning me in her arms; her smile was bright and fond and her eyes soft as she read. I remember she had the most beautiful voice.
"Once upon a time," she would speak the words like they where practiced, like she had actually lived them. She would smile and me by the end and say: "—and they lived happily ever after."
She'd wipe away my tears as they leaked from my eyes and kiss my forehead one last time before slipping into the shadows.
Papa didn't understand this when I was younger. He thought the fairytales Mama told me where creepy, unsettling—he didn't like it when Mama told me the stories. He'd tell Mama that they'd scare me, that I'm only a child—his little princess.
Mama would always laugh, her eyes soft and then they would get say. "It's because she is one," she'd say, "that I tell them to her." Her smile used to light my world, brighter than any sun. "Childhood isn't forever like her stories."
I would always laugh to myself, thinking, "But they are real." I didn't understand until it was too late, I guess.
My Mama used to tell me stories when I was young, until I cried, and my children would be no different.
"Once upon a time, there was a princess—"
I would always refrain myself from crying with them, I'd always refrain from telling the last story my Mama ever told me because I think—I always will think this, even after twenty years—that saying those words is admitting that she will never come back.
My mother is dead.
"Once upon a time…"