related to childhood emotional abuse or neglect...
not to be confused with derealization or 'fantasy prone personality'

maladaptive daydreaming is seeing your face when I fall asleep at night
or hearing your voice in a children's store

"Come look! Look at these shoes!", and seeing you scramble at a pair of sandals

Big brown eyes begging me to buy them as "an early birthday present, just this once."

Maladaptive daydreaming
is blinking and not even having time to register the fact that you'd disappeared

and I was standing alone in the children's shoe aisle,
on my knees holding a pair of sandals
and feeling that same twist in my gut that I did on the day

the papers were signed and my passport was stamped,
to get on a plane to another country

without so much as waving goodbye

Maladaptive daydreaming is crying through anti-abortion rhetoric
and sympathising with teenage mothers

it's seeing you smile behind a nikon camera, calling
"Look at this pretty picture I took! See, see?"

and then realising that I was only smiling at a fallen camera in the sand

Maladaptive daydreaming
is regretting a choice I didn't make

it's steeling my jaw at immature jokes
and relating to all those children raising children

Maladaptive daydreaming
is regretting giving up a daughter
I never had