=ITWY=

I confess I have written
a letter to you and sealed it
in an envelope addressed
to you, but now forgotten,
face down in my drawer.

Dear you,

I am entrapped within a poem,
a beautiful poem, with such moving lines
and compelling imagery which blinds me
to the world as it truly is.

They say prose can be as pretty
as poetry and more rich in its utility.
But the world as it is
before me stands as a dream
more than reality- prose parsed
into poetic bamboo leaves,
yes, only leaves.

My emotions and actions stem
from within this prison of words.
My thoughts and feelings are colored
by this limited green
and some sky when its blue.

But you know,
I really do not wish
to leave this world,
tinted as it is,
sparse as it is,
unpolished as it is,
so incomplete.

Tell me what's on the other side
so compelling as to pull me over.
Perhaps your skies are more than blue,
clouded white and grey or mostly unnoticed.
So you have streets and streetlights
for the people making their way home from work,
and cardboard boxes for those with no homes,
and concrete ones for those who have,
stacked up beside wooden dollhouses,
meant for the others.

You have a cold wind too
and a clockwork orange sun to keep you warm
despite clouds and sometimes rain,
for which you'll have raincoats,
actually more like umbrellas these days,
they tell me. I will miss my raincoat.

I will miss my imaginary blanket
if I wrap myself in a blanket of prose.
My blanket of made-up friends and lovers
exchanged for family and some people I know.
Instead of leaving it in a clump,
I'll have to fold my blanket,
brush my teeth and eat breakfast,
perhaps no longer with you.

It'll be like waking from a dream.
Even if remembered and recorded,
everything will be forgotten
or eventually ignored because
it was but a dream. I am sure
you've seen these words of a poet-
"Life is but a dream."

Faithfully yours,
me

P.S I love you