when you were six you played castle with your siblings. you always wanted to be the dragon but you were usually the princess because your sister didn't like to play. your brothers best friend would be the prince, because your brother always said that he had a crush on you, and he would stand with a bouquet of grass and call you down from your tower. your tower was just the roof of a truck and you can remember the scratches and scrapes that it took getting up and down each time. you'd take the weeds and pick through them until finally finding a flower to put behind your ear. you didn't realize then that life would be so similar, that getting down from your tower would always be hard and there would always be weeds. when you're a princess now you don't have to pick through the weeds yourself, he sorts and shifts and searches with his own two hands and finds the flower to put behind your ear himself. you lean into his words just like you leaned into his chest, relaxing beneath the faded fear of giving him your trust in such a complete package of both body and mind. you sort through your weeds for him too, searching for at least a dandelion but sometimes only finding the ball of fluffy seeds to make a wish on. in the morning he wakes you up with smiles, kisses, cooling gels, a heating pad. you feel like milk beneath him, flowing and thick but soft and lazily sweet. the marks left on your body spark to life only when he touches them and you wonder if younger you would have ever guessed him, if she ever imagined a real prince when playing castle at all. you wonder if younger you would have ever guessed you. later you wrap a blanket around your bruised and sore body, pulling yourself out of bed only to pour yourself back into a hammock on the porch with a book. you send him pictures of the marks that he left on you, highlighted beneath the sunlight. the scratches and blue ovals of fingers, the skin splitting licks of leather, the bruising inside your thighs. before you fall back asleep, letting your legs stick out from the cover and into the breeze, you text one last thing.