Pretending

I like to pretend.

I lie in a bed in glistening gossamer atop a canopy of tall, lovely trees that lift me up to the sky...like a bird listening to the leaves singing. These icy steel posts and firm, plain blankets aren’t real. That fluorescent electric light beaming through my plastic curtains is truly just the pale, full moon in disguise, and those little potted plants on the floor are lush and fruitful...never ceasing in abundance. It is a shimmering and eternal moment.

They’ve always told me that I have a ravishing imagination...as if I am some sort of rare and splendid creature. In my meager youth, my mind was my fantasy...curious and blissful and teeming with adventure. It is no longer so enticing as that. Perhaps it never was. Now, the curtains pull back and loneliness pierces painfully through my swollen lids. Now, my darling plants are withering...petals falling lifeless onto the scratchy beige carpet as tears upon my skin. Now, I know. That fantasy has always been an escape...but from what? Is escape honorable? Is it true?

I am alone in my imagination. I see what I see, but the world will not know it as I do. Art, in all of its magic and divinity, will give what it can, but nothing captures everything. And here I’ll lie, alone.