she had a telescope in her pocket. one of those cool tiny ones, like a pirate might have if he were searching for buried treasure. she told me it was magic, let her see enchanted things like fairies and mermaids and little trolls with fuzzy hair. they were scared of normal people. they were really shy, she said but they were real and alive, breathing air and eating brunch and taking baths like us.
she’d look through her telescope when we walked to school or through the park lost in it, like she wasn't even there next to me but somewhere else, on an island that no one had a map of. sometimes she’d point, say “look! in that tree, right there!” so I’d squint and try to see what only she could see but all I’d see was some leaves or a nest or nothing at all.
sometimes I’d lie next to her on the lawn and close my eyes. and she could breathe an image behind my closed eyelids and I could feel the breeze as fairies flew by, and hear the mermaids’ tails sweeping against toasted rocks and it was like I’d rowed a ship across that ocean to her island I’d found the map, I was next to her, and the world was just as she said it was-- magical. but the difference between me and her was she could open her eyes, and still see it all. but I’d open my eyes, and all I’d see was some leaves or a nest or nothing at all.
"Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing." -Bill Cosby