If I Close My Eyes, I Can Feel Myself Flying
prose poem
It’s on those days when my mind seems to expand past the sanctions of my reality that a door of limitless possibilities seems to lie in the very palm of my hands. As though I might float all the way up to the heavens and bring back a handful of stardust in my pocket to sprinkle over my eyes when life becomes too dull.
Shimmering flashes of a love I fantasized about for days soon become lost somewhere in pieces scattered along in the background of one of the many new scenarios. Similar to that annoying white noise you hear in the back of your head, disguised as déjà vu; you question yourself in search of that annoying itch that doesn’t seem to exist: “I know them from somewhere,” “that face seemed familiar,” “can you repeat your name?” Before I’m spiraling down another rabbit hole of my latest delusions, as though some rabid stalker.
You’ve jumped across realities to find me as though we were written in the stars! (Soulmates, perhaps?) We are to meet someday! I know we will! My mind has already been made up! I can feel it all the way down to the very tips of me, expanding across my vast being, rooting me down into that snug feeling deep in my chest. Do you see them? Do you see the strings that connect me to all the glorious possibilities around me?
But on those days when my body feels boneless, as though I might collapse in on myself, when reality seems so soft around the edges, on those days when my vanilla creamer stands out against the bittersweet twang of the dark amber coffee (perhaps the taste of clarity slipping back through? Or is it my remembering of my fears?), it’s when my body detaches from all the other realities, broken strings that once connected me falling into cupped palms, gently encompassed, before being tucked safely against the warm expanse of my chest cavity, a dull ache now substituting that snug feeling. It is on those days when I reach into my pocket to sprinkle that stardust upon my eyes so that I may dream again.
Only to discover pocket lint.
— rinse and repeat
