Play Pretend

Let’s all, just for a moment, pretend that we’re alive.
Close your eyes if you must and think about the colour green and tell me:
is it softer than your cheek or more like alligator skin?
Pretend you’re really breathing,
your lungs filled to the brim
with a chemical concoction that bears every spark of life -
and you’re living it
in this moment.

Just for this moment, let’s pretend we’re alive
and not creatures so devoid of light
we only start blossoming when the sun shows its full glory
in a sky that is sapphire,
blue — we can’t quite tell if it’s sweet or icy.
Go deeper and think of what’s pumping life through you in a deafening rhythm;
if you listen to it closely; pretend it’s a song you’ve never heard before -
and who knows, maybe you haven’t,
or haven’t danced to it with feverish feet,
knowing full well that your movement is dictating the beat,
trust me:
you’re the conductor of the never-ending song.

Pretend, just for this moment — and I shall too — that the images you see,
written into code,
written into words,
creating a story so unique
you’d recoil from its novelty and yet feel weirdly drawn to
everything you’re sure you’ve heard before,
are not all of what’s to see. 
And what we feel on fingertips
is only half of what we ought to feel.

Let’s all applaud ourselves for pretending in our routine of pretending -
we have mastered it long before, pretend that we’re happy and pretend that we feel
most alive when we lunge ourselves off cliffs and out of planes sky high,
when the moment we could really feel most alive
is with ourselves; 
with realising that life itself is marking us all over,
with moments manifold,
some scarringly vivid, some just plain scars.
 
 And stop.

Just for this moment, let’s not pretend we’re alive and not scarred,
let’s not pretend to feel whole when we’re not.
Let’s think of alligator skin and sapphire skies
and not act like they make us feel alive.
It’s one thing to pretend to know and feel,
another to speak truth into ourselves and admit a small defeat,
or — the single biggest victory:
we’re most alive, in mind and soul and heart
when we can stop pretending that we are.