Dulce Et Decorum Est

'I would fight for my liberty so long as my strength lasted...'
- Harriet 'Moses' Tubman.

We are not players in the cosmos, although that's what we believe. Do you see us making our own destinies, forging our own paths? Or do we follow in the footsteps of others, follow the paths institutions and our own ambitions have set before us? We pursue the dreams we had when we were children, and on the way become adults. Our dreams change. Our needs change. Everything changes, but by the time we're realise we're in too deep, it's too late to surface.

So we swim.

Every little girl wants to be a princess. Some even drag the dream with them as they age, throwing extravagant parties and wearing glass slippers to pretend they aren't like everybody else. Every man who holds open a door becomes a white knight, a prince charming, a slide beneath the microscope of family and friends and our own hearts. The dream follows close on our heels, smooths over his flaws and makes him perfect. It doesn't matter who came before; no one will come after.

I lie on the beach.

I don't swim.

I think, and nothing can touch me.

There's a photographer nearby, maybe two, maybe five. I'm grateful for endless hours of yoga, zumba, cardio – I'm still shallow enough to hope that the pictures of me in a swimsuit are pretty. I hope I look happy in them. I'm some little girl's dream now, after all.

The name of my book will be catalogued, the brand of my sunglasses.

How tanned I've become or if I'm too pale.

If my body has returned to the exact same shape it used to be.

This year will pass, I tell myself. Two years, if he demands it. They will create viable grounds for our separation, an affair on my part, or something to do with the church. I hope people at home aren't dragged into it, I hope no one I love or have loved is named as the guilty party. Brooklyn would take it for me, but he wouldn't enjoy the press. Manhattan…Manhattan would lie through his teeth and smile as if it were true, because I'd be free and he'd learn to hope again. His love is constant, and constantly disappointed. I wonder if the kind of love I send back – the kind of love that I feel coming from my skin even now, from my pores like heat – and his love will ever be conducive to togetherness again. To Happily Ever After.

I don't know, and I won't be the one hoping.

"Smile," I'm instructed. I smile, and he smiles, and I think he thinks I hate him. I don't. I understand him. I've been him before, the one betrayed by the one you love, the one you suspected all along was capable of betraying you, so you locked that idea away behind a secret door in your head.

"Look happy."

"I am."

"Look ecstatic, then. You're in love."

He's right about that. He knows it, too.

"Consequences aren't only for New York and Monaco."

"Don't threaten me," I reply, still smiling. The sun is hot and the water is calm and the air is heavy. I want to sleep. I want to sleep this apparently short year away. I don't want to go home and see my mother's face, not disappointed in me but disappointed by my fate. I don't want to see family and friends and be put beneath the microscope myself, because they know me better than anyone. They'll see the cracks I'm just now covering with sun cream.

I don't want to throw parties and wear glass slippers and pretend I'm not like everyone else.

I am, but I'm not.

"Let me do that." He takes the lotion bottle from me, posturing for the cameras, cramming our wedded bliss down their throats. I stare at page forty eight until the words blur. I've been stuck on it for what seems like hours, every sentence read a dozen times over and still not taken in.

It's warm out here, but his hands are cold – and that's all there is to say about him, really.

A princess honours her country first and her heart second.

My country is Manhattan. My throne is the steps of the Met. My courtiers wear headbands and couture. Someday, I will return to that, on the day when every tiara is thrown down. On the day when they burn the flags.

I will be queen, and my castle will be home.

Fin.