(on surviving the unreal, and the Grace of finding the real)
There’s a kind of pain that doesn’t scream.
It hums low and constant, like a fluorescent bulb above a hollow life.
It’s the ache of loving someone who chooses the polished unreal—
the version of themselves that sells better, that fits easier, that lies cleaner.
They decorate their soul in fake plastic leaves
because they’re terrified of winter.
But in doing so, they cut off the chance of spring.
And you.. I...
am left holding a love that was meant for the root,
but never made it past the paint.
She wanted the unreal.
Maybe because it doesn’t bleed.
Maybe because it doesn’t ask her to remember who she really is.
And maybe she knew.. deep down..
that the real would burn through her curated silence
and set fire to the mask she clung to like oxygen.
So she left.
Or faded.
Or dissolved into the glossy mouth of what sells well in a culture
that has confused image for intimacy
and chaos for freedom.
I tried to survive it.
Tried to make a home in the debris of what might have been
if she had chosen the real.
But you can’t build a life in the hollow where someone used to be..
not when they’ve made a throne out of illusion
and named it sovereignty.
And then came the beautiful songbird.
Not loud. Not selling.
Not another soul trying to be seen.
Just… real.
She was born into a world her father still loved--
a man who held truth like a compass in his palm.
But her mother knelt too long beneath the plastic trees,
and drank from their shine until she forgot how to feel.
And so the beautiful girl,
shapely and soft,
was offered up to Hollywood like a sacrifice..
where faces are sculpted and souls are scripted.
But somehow, even there,
she kept her edges unsanded.
She learned how to walk through mannequins without becoming one.
And when they tried to name her fake,
she whispered back something real—
and it echoed.
She didn’t hand me a performance.
She gave me a presence.
She let her softness speak without shame.
She showed me her bruises before her lipstick.
She gave warmth that didn’t need applause.
And I realized..
what the unreal can never fake
is the sacred weight of someone truly with you.
You feel it in the breath between sentences.
In the calm that doesn’t need to be filled.
In the eyes that stay when yours begin to water.
The beautiful songbird didn’t try to be the real thing.
She simply was.
And that… healed something the fake could only ever reopen.
So yes, Fake Plastic Trees still wrecks me--
but it no longer belongs to her.
It belongs to the grave I buried beside the shopping cart and glitter
where her soul should’ve been.
Because the songbird
waters what’s real.
She doesn’t break me just because she can.
She doesn’t look through me.
She looks at me.
And suddenly, I’m growing again.
Not to impress, not to perform..
but because she makes it safe to be Alive.
"It wears her out..."
Trying to be what she isn’t.
But not the songbird.
She doesn’t wear out—
she wears in.
She wears truth.
And it fits like home
youtu.be/n5h0qHwNrHk?si=3BE678xdz8HhLKaa
#BeautifulSongbird
https://voca.ro/1hmVcg90sRBp
<3
