You’re only blood and bones. You come to life only because of what I imagine you to be. An intrusive thought, a vampire sucking all my energy. What I envision as the “would be, should be, could be.” You’re not real you’re just a reflection of me, yet I still can’t seem to get over you.

I lose myself. I sacrifice all, vulnerable and trembling… and yet nothing is quite right, my ‘Wonderland’ is all wrong. And I shrink and I grow, but this story isn’t mine. I beg, borrow and steal the narrative of my life from poets, artists, authors, and those long dead. The glue I’m using to piece this puzzle together is expanding and making the vision distorted. I know this but still forcibly shove together the concept of the future, frantically trying to make sense of my truth -which is really a pretty lie.

There is an absence of connection. I imagine that would be corrected if I was somebody else. Or maybe it’s because you are. You are somebody I don’t know. Accepting the expectations I put on you but unable to deliver because you are not real, not in the way that my truth believes. That truth should help me dissolve the imagined between us. Yet, you never seem to fully go away.

I can imagine this is what people with schizophrenia suffer through. The idea that the person is real, but in the end having to accept that it was all just a projection.

What is forever? Sometimes just a moment.

CR