If you would have told her ten years ago
that it would be this easy,
she would have cursed you in the night.
You have no idea, she whispers,
what it took to get here from there.
She raises her dark head out of water
like she did not need to come up for air,
like she has been swimming right under this surface
for years, and she does not need you to know
just how effortless it has become.
There is something to be said about that, yes.
Something to find beautiful.
She is no mystical creature.
She is no precious landscape.
But if she was a princess
in someone else's castle,
I'd be inclined to believe her about it.