montana week 2

to Yellowstone National Park

the beauty stretches for ages without end, running along the mountains to the valleys, then through the small streams to the geysers, and finally dangles itself dangerously on the waterfall. you've always existed in pixels, and now you're threatening me with your particle breath. i refuse to call you anything other than a movie scene, a watercolour painting, a desktop wallpaper, a music sheet. twenty three years on this planet and i think i know how the world looks like… and you’re still laughing at my stubbornness, telling me i got everything wrong. 

the earth is not rows of buildings and malls and roads after all, is that true? tell me that it’s true. tell me that it’s true. i’m drawn like a moth to a flame, quivering with excitement and fear as i read you. the unknown. fearing that i will absorb you so strong you will become imprinted upon my short-term memory. that i will forget both your surreality and reality alike. that one day, you will disappear, and the loss will be too difficult to bear… the same way i felt when i saw the forest of my childhood sliced apart and pared down to the very last bone. i might be better off not knowing it at all. so to protect me and you i keep telling myself, this is not real, this is not real, all the time while you have fun zapping my nose red and tickling my toes blue, as if giving me a rude shake to wake up from my dreaming in the other world that i belong.

i know with certainty that i don’t deserve this. i wonder, then, who most deserves this? who owns this? who can make the mountain crumble in their palm; who can call the winds to sing through the trees? i would like a word with the head of logistics, please.

this is a dream. i fall asleep. this is not a dream. i wake. 

i slipped into this harry potter world, and hang onto it so hard that my fingers and toes are bleeding. and i continue to let the blood fall for as long as the bison takes to cross the road. because letting go is more painful than these open gashes... still the time comes. and slips, out of grasp, into the hands of another blurry-eyed twenty-three year old.