story forsaken

once there was a boy and a girl

(for there are always boys and girls)

and it so happened that they —

but wait!  why should they?

every story comes out the same

if the expected always happens

smell the double-shot espresso!

in the end, the boy didn’t get her

and the girl never got him, either

because neither ever fell in love

with the other, and they remained

alive until the end of their days

as fiction goes this is the most

unpredictable and original plot

because it is simply never written

readers like zesty romance, tinged

with tragedy or comedy as it may be

what about all the stories of the people

who never fell in love with each other?

don’t they deserve to be fictionalized

and exploited?  real life contains a

horribly funny mundanity that most

authors ignore because it doesn’t pay

two hundred pages and no kisses?

no batted eyelashes, no coy flirting?

the unimaginative will throw down

the book in digust and buy another

i cannot help it! cries the author

what could not be cannot happen!

i shall not kill my characters by

making them forsake themselves

they simply never fell in love …

and so such stories are forsaken