The child carefully packs
the sand into the red bucket
and dreams of the castle she
is building, the one in which
she can be the princess.
Her parents know the tide
will soon carry her castle away
and with it her dream, but they
do not stop and wonder why
little girls always dream of being
princesses and never queens,
for mothers of little girls
are long past the age
when a handsome young prince
might arrive to sweep them away,
and they are left to think only
of what their husbands, who imagine
themselves kings of their realms,
might want for dinner that night.