roman a clef

You close your eyes and all the world goes dead. You think you made it up inside your head.
—
Now and then you see people for the first time. For the first time in a hundred times. In a hundred, hundred, times. And you can’t help but stare.

They’re like Pollock-style paint drops. Only prettier. You look at them for God knows how many years. But you never really see them. Even though you think you do. Until you tilt your head just right, or just left, or just some new and unimagined way you’ve never tilted it before. And suddenly…there’s more.

(Except, you always knew that, didn’t you? Wasn’t that always the point? The why you closed your eyes?)

Then, you have to ask yourself, if your self is anything like mine, whether it’s all just an illusion. A Rorschach test that life threw at you to remind you that everything is relative…to something else. And that that something else isn’t always you.

(It’s not always about you.)

But, maybe, it is. Maybe you made it all up, your new way of seeing someone else’s being, because you wanted to. Because you needed to?

Like Plath and Pollock.

(Except, you know better. They’re still more than what you see.)

I close my eyes and all the world goes dead. I wish I’d made you up inside my head.