More.

In our little store,

My parents and my siblings,

Lived and worked.

But there must be more than

Living and dying in this village.

When the prince comes

From another land,

With symbols on

His cloak I have never seen,

He has what I crave, the ability to

Go somewhere else;

Be someone bigger.

But his eyes never follow me,

They follow her;

After all, a prince should marry a princess.

Her beauty puts the stars to shame.

How can someone as ordinary

As me

Steal her extraordinary beauty?

The princess finds solace

In me,

Away from her royal duties;

She sneaks out whenever she can

To meet me.

So when I ask her to meet me in the forest,

She is excited

That we get to meet again.

In her food, my poison goes.

Later, in the middle of the night,

I pay someone to skin her.

The kingdoms mourns for its

Lost princess.

A couple of moons later,

A sorceress stitches her skin to me;

I look beautiful.

I return to the village,

My parents seemed to mourn me:

I cannot stay with them

In their tiny store.

So I walk past them,

Towards the castle,

The kingdom rejoices

At their lost princess

Being found.

The princess told me

As she grew up

She was raised

As a princess,

Not a person.

As if she had any right

To complain

When she doused in beauty from the heavens 

And was able to go

Outside of the kingdom.

I didn't sympathize

With her;

I didn't care about her,

Only her position.

She is more than a mere villager.

I should have cared.

After a few nights of being coddled,

The palace placed me under scrutiny

And intense training.

Now I see why she used to sneak out so frequently.

I meet the prince again,

He seemed just as loving and caring.

The king decided to marry me off to him

To form an alliance

In the case of war.

I finally get to travel outside of the kingdom;

I am now a queen.

When I arrived in the new kingdom,

I was cared for and all my wishes were granted...

Until I gave birth to a girl,

One, twice, and three times.

After the fifth time,

The caring prince ignored me

And if he did talk to me

It was to scrutinize me.

Later, he sent an assassin

To kill me;

My chance of giving him

A male heir had reached its limit.

As I lay in a pool of my own blood

I thought:

I wasn't treated as a person,

But a vessel to bear him heirs.

I wish I could go back;

My family didn't have much,

But at least I was treated like

A person,

And not a position.

I'm sorry princess,

I should have cared about you.

After all, a princess is still a slave to her kingdom.