daily life is full time make-believe

[ __________ ]

Today you opened my closet and I asked if you were looking for skeletons. You said yes, quite seriously, closing the doors. First the right. Then the left. I usually close the left first. You say you can tell I like abstract art by the way I arrange my hair brushes on the dresser. I tell you you're an impressionist, too easily charmed by lilacs' shadows. In perfect fashion, this is what I know: your worst habits, your most redeeming qualities, where your fear of commitment stems from, and how you like your eggs. Your worst habits have never mattered because your redeeming qualities matter more, and tomorrow the eggs will matter, and tomorrow we will have breakfast for dinner, cracking each satisfactorily on the edge of the counter. The yolks of yours will break, but so will mine, and they are to be scrambled anyway.

Chianti and take-out Chinese followed us onto the roof as we waited for the predicted streaks of light. I say I miss the part of life when everyone gave out valentines. I try to say how there are certain experiences that, once lived, can never be recreated, but solely reinvented. I say I've had wonderful reinventions of those valentines, but part of me will always miss the construction paper and chaos and the fairness that came from making sure everyone was loved. You tell me life isn't fair and love certainly isn't either. I tell you it's worse than you think, for life is random. It's quiet until you finally say that you miss the Tooth Fairy. She taught you it was okay to sell your body for money.

You ask what star gazing reminds me of. I surprise myself and actually tell you the story of how my friends and I had stood under a star carpet at midnight in the woods. We had each written on slips of paper the thing that troubled us the most at the time. Our biggest worry. Our biggest fear. In complete silence, we dropped the papers into a pre-dug hole, filling it completely with dirt. You ask me what I'm afraid of. I tell you spiders, june bugs, clowns, the feeling of being followed, the threat of liquids exploding every time I put them in a suitcase, being unhappy, being unsatisfied, potentially wrong choices, global warming in theory, ventriloquist dummies, computer viruses, jolly ranchers, and it being too late. Same question. You tell me you are afraid of being afraid to sin.

You say/ I say
[ there is one thing thing you need to know about me: I have no intention of telling the truth ]

Mutual agreement. We leave it at that.