Faded Pages

There is a world underneath this one,

Behind it and beyond it and all tangled up and twisted into it, a series of knots that will never come undone.

Sometimes you go there. Sometimes you never do. Usually you come back, but sometimes you stay.

It’s a better place than this one. It’s nothing and everything,

and you’re conscious but you’re asleep and dreaming,

and you’re asleep and not dreaming.

Sometimes people in black line up and they cry for you, but you’re happy, but they can’t know that. Sometimes no one even notices you’re gone.

You’re surrounded by people there, or just one person you’ve never met and never seen, but you’ve known them your whole life, you’re best friends, you’re lovers, they’re a part of you and you’re a part of them.

You go about your daily life, blissfully unaware that things here are out of place or impossible, unaware of the things and the people you left behind. Every color is vivid, some of them are brighter and more beautiful than any color that can exist. Everyone smiles, everyone sees forever, and forever stares back and smiles.

All light is sunshine,

and all darkness is sunshine too. The only secrets are the good ones, the ones you keep because they keep you warm. You love and are loved so profoundly, love stretches between you and the end of everything and back again, wraps you in its arms and asks you if you want to stay forever.

You do. You want it more than you’ve ever wanted anything, in fact you’ve never wanted anything else.

Then,

sometimes,

you notice one of those things that is impossible or out of place. Or you remember one of those things you left behind. Or maybe it’s just that love and forever were pulled so taut that

something had to give,

and everything bleeds away.

Colors fade, faces blur. Hands disappear.

The old world comes back into view, like drawing sunglasses over your eyes, or someone put a King on top of your Ace, yet somehow you lose.

You hold on tight, you claw and scramble to stay. You don’t know where you’re going but you know it won’t be like this other place,

you won’t have that person or that warmth ever again. If you can just hold on

But you can’t.

You wake up. Or snap out of it. Or just open your eyes.

And now sunshine is still sunshine, but not as bright. And darkness is darkness.

Someone might love you, but not like that shy boy and his family did, or not like that skinny girl with messy brown hair who lived across the street from you. Or like that ever-reaching warmth you felt,

and here the warmth is only ever tepid.

Colors are only ever pastel. And you might have a good day, and you might even smile.

But not like you did there, in that other world.

The lucky ones don’t have to come back from it, and the unlucky ones don’t remember they were ever there at all,

Just that they had a good dream they can’t remember anything about,

only that it was the best dream they ever had.

Maybe we hear a whisper of a name, see a face out of the corner of our eyes, catch a hint of a smell or feel a hand brush against our own,

but turn to look and nothing is there.

Well, it is there, sort of. Underneath, behind and beyond and all tangled up,

somewhere,

just out of reach.