To Fight Reality

Scales and feathers the color of a starless night reflect a faint light. As if from a fantasy, the creature’s armor glints, the gem in his chest seeming to glow from a certain angle. The cool rough texture of his scales provided a comfort of sorts when everything seemed too real for me. The creature that has a place in so many fantasies holds a reality of sorts as his form stands resolute in a proud stance. He is not the dragon from the fairytales. He is not a creature of darkness. He is not a heinous guard to a helpless royal. He is a protector, a knight. His roaring call would raise the feeble hearts of the strongest warriors and the smallest children. The brontide that he bellows almost overpowering the animalistic screech in his cry. It was the sound of bravery that I needed. He is the protector; he protects humans from themselves. And though I invented his character as a child, he still sits around. He collects dust that I occasionally wash off and I watch as he shines in the sun. I find comfort in his gleam and in the meaning that he holds. He was the protector of my childhood self: a warrior against reality.

Books: with old thin pages, with edges becoming frayed, with new spines and shiny gloss, with hard covers protecting their secrets. Opening them, they all smell the same. A slightly cool breeze brushes over my face as if the pages were the wings of a small bird. From the shuffling paper, I breathe in the familiar, comforting scent. A musky smell like an attic heater in winter, like an old dryer sheet. I watch the movement of the age-tinted pages and the strangely bright new. The books that fray hold a sense of loss, and the new ones a sense of sadness. For I cannot help imagining what their spines will look like after 20 years of use: the paper torn in places, stains on the once clear pages, the words beginning to fade, the covers sun-bleached gray in certain places, the way they would lose their shine just like people. Slowly, I find myself leaving my own world of fantasies behind to indulge in those of others. The words of those who found a way to preserve their imagination now feed mine as it fights to survive. Using the imagination of others, I guard from the reality I try so hard to forget.

A glass jar the shape of a bulb. A ring too small with a face of a warrior. Scrolls of the past, the present and the future, and all that they held. Remembering the dragon, the books that were many, the fantasies of myself and the stories I never told. How strange that the holder of my secrets is transparent, for glass does not protect nor separate fantasy from the real. The slight chips toward the top will not hide the papers. The seam where glass had been melted together will not block the view. The scrolled are rolled but their contents are know. The torn edges give away the frantic nature in which they were made. The lined paper of a notebook shows the immaturity in their making. But after a point I guess fantasy fades and the real takes hold. Hiding in the world of others, the books that I relied on to keep safe, the stories I built up, the warriors I created to protect me from what I knew was coming, either way, I cannot fight the inevitable for long. As my hair fades to grey, so do the colors of my imagination, as my eyes begin to give, so does my mind, and as death sets in, so does reality.
