Manic Pixie Dream Boy

We turn boys into magic because we're desperate to escape — we let them swirl us around, get nose deep in our magic, anything to get us out of this fishbowl.

He shows up with ideas and a soul he painted poetically, with the ending still unwritten, waiting for us to finish the script.

He exists to make our lives more interesting — that’s the whole trope. He makes us a playlist. Says something quietly profound on a fire escape, letting the cigarette smoke linger, wanting us to witness. Is it the fog or the words you want us to see? When we do it, it’s manipulation. When he does it, we call it depth.

They’ve been handed the lost boys narrative, the men who fell through the cracks of a world that kept changing without asking permission. And you – you aestheticized the wound. You watched enough seven-second videos to speak therapy, to sound self-aware, because you knew we'd swoon for a man actually doing the work — so you cosplay the trying. The trying is the performance. The gold medal for participation efforts.

Are you here to love me or just to look? Lay me out on your tongue — can you? Do you know how? Would you really let my beauty move you? Are your insides swirling too? Our little trickster in soft boy clothes.

Is freedom still freedom if no one ever chooses you over it?

Do you ever stay long enough to be loved back?

Please don't make me magic just to disappear. Please don't polish my shine just to watch me go.

Do you always have to be a shooting star, or can I trap you in a jar, keep you on my bedside table to shake whenever I want, fill you with glitter and ribbons, the bliss of my whole world in the palm of my own hand — you fill my eyes with sparkle only I get to see.

My hair’s not long enough to let down and I'm all out of leaps of faith, sorry to say.

I stopped being a prize the day I stopped needing one.