I opened a book and flew
to a far distant land
I disappeared from my room and the mundane sounds of everyday
This world was alive, this island of infinite adventures
George, not to be called Georgina
and the other three, and the doggy
I have the faintest memories
Except they aren't quite like memories
I don't remember words, but broken videos and sepia photographs
like I lived all these stories in a a past life
a life where everything seemed monumental-
huts were mansions,
shrubs-forests, people-giants, moments-eternity
Siting on a bed and making shapes out of bugs on the ceiling
on grass that smelled green, making smoke monsters out of clouds
In these idyllic wanderings into imagination
Homework was the tripping hazard
Map Stencils? Arithmetic?
5+18= STAY INSIDE THE BOX.
When I open the pages now,
its never quite the same,
I wonder how someone could be named ****
and how their parents let them own an island
and why they never grew up.
So I pick up something with more pages
and longer words, and complex thoughts
and subtexts based on isms, and context
But the words stay on the pages
and the pages in my hand
and my bed in my room, with me trapped within
I hear my cellphone buzzing, and a notification about nothing on facebook
So I put a bookmark, never returning.
I think it happens when you're thirteen,
the initiation, rite of passage
they lock up that secret part of your mind
and put the key inside your old journal that you never use (because journals went 'live')
Welcome to the real world! Now you must find yourself!
Who are you? What do you want? What's the quickest way to get it?
Find a path and tread it carefully; don't wander or hover, or smell a water lilly, or stare at a worm, or chase a butterfly.
Just keep moving, till you get to that destination- where you'll find applause. (Oooh..applause they say.)
I'm walking and walking and walking.
But I cant find mansions or forests or giants.
Everything seems so small, so vivid.
I see the builders, not the castle; the tricks, not the magic; the camera, not the fairy tale.
I try to veer off-coarse into the wilderness
I try to wander but my footsteps seem so measured.
I start running and the roots of trees trip me, and the branches
scratch my face.
I fall and open my eyes and see the endless true blue sky.
I think there might have been a lake that glimmered with angeldust,
and I heard whispers of laughter that kept bouncing off the water.
There was something about the wind, like mystery in the air.
I felt on the verge of something, a clue, a challenge
An untitled adventure.
As I began to leave reality behind and lose myself in this strange, faraway land- a key turned, a door shut. The answering machine beeped.
I know now why the famous five stayed young forever.