SUGAR-FED PRINCESS

In her velvet and lace world, the princess groans and awakens to a lilac dawn. It's like this every day for her, sugar-coated living. Fawning courtiers. No one bothers to tell her the truth: that she's fat as a corn- fed cow and ugly as an aardvark carcass bloated on the side of the road. She doesn't have any presence or in fact any redeeming qualities, only this: She is the princess. And people have been hand-delivering a sugar- coated life to her for so long it's become a habit. She no longer has to deserve the bonbons that get shoved down her throat. And if she refuses one, if she dares complain, she feels even more unworthy. There are those in the land who've never tasted processed white sugar. They would scoff at her complaints, an she'd feel like a heel.

Sure, she's been fortunate, finger fed all her life. But at the core she isn't really happy, and there doesn't seem to be any way out. She's the princess, and certain things are expected. Sure people ask her opinion, but afraid to cause wars, she agrees with their plans for her kingdom.

Because, mainly, they aren't bad plans. They are solidly progressive, expectedly conservative. Exactly the way her kingdom should be handled.

But every morning she wakes and knows this truth: her name will never be sung when she is dead. In the centuries to come, no biographer will call her a great queen. No towns will be named for her, no ages or eras. Probably not even a hairdo.

And she feels the moment of escape crest and pass. Her opportunities to make her reign glorious are becoming fewer now as the years pass, and she feels hemmed on all sides by solid good judgements and kind-hearted advisors.

Her Prince Charming tells her that she is beautiful because, mainly, he needs to believe that all princesses are beautiful. It has never occurred to him that sometimes princesses are fat and futile.

This princess hears his heartfelt compliments and kisses him gently, knowing that he means every word. He is blind to the truth, she knows, and she's grown tired of trying to convince him of the truth:

Her world is sugar coated. And she's diabetic.