Real Romance--a little long, don't read if your attention span is short

I’m sitting here
indulging in the same guilty habit
I’ve had since I was twelve years old
and I can feel the familiar
metallic distaste rising
in the back of my throat,
making me cringe inwardly.

I’m reading a romance novel.
The story is the same as it ever was
set in a faraway land, in a long-ago time.

The heroine, in her perfection,
is breathtaking:
bewitching emerald eyes, nub nose,
and, naturally, silky golden hair
reaching to the crack of her ass.

Why always to the crack, I’m never sure…

She is feisty and independent
(until anything goes wrong)
and somehow, forever smells of wildflowers.

The hero, in his gallantry,
is untouchable:
overwhelmingly tall, broad, and strapping,
ever poised to catch
swooning females as they fall.
If he has a fault
it is that he is too strong—
but even this he eventually overcomes.

Through the dewy years of my adolescence
I believed completely in every such tale
and would accept nothing less.
I would feel my ardour fading
every time my Prince Charming
had the audacity to go
off script in the celluloid fantasies
I had created.

Now, my undiluted delusions
have been tempered by experience
my uncompromising ideals
have been brought down by reality.

Now, if I were to write a romance novel,
my epic love affair would begin
in the here and now.

My heroine, in her quirkiness,
would be fascinating:
freckled with mud-brown eyes
a scar below her chin
(that has a story she won’t tell you)
and curls that frizz every time it rains.
She is feisty and independent
even when she wished
she didn’t have to be.

My hero, in his fallibility,
would be endearing:
a little on the scrawny side
he doesn’t have all the answers
and he’s been rejected enough
to be guarded, but still have hope.
If he has one fault
it is counting all his other faults
unable to forgive himself for them.

In making love,
he would worship her every bump and valley
not for their flawlessness
but because they belong to her.

And sometimes, he’d fart in bed
and she would laugh, not turn away.

In my romance, not everything works
and when they fight
sometimes one or the other will drive away
to return an hour or a day later.

Not because apart they are incomplete.
The real reason is deeper, stronger.
In the end, it is simply that
they are better together.