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Posts Tagged ‘pretend’

 

 

By then, the blizzard was strong enough

that we couldn’t see past the chair in front of us—

all was white oblivion. And though I knew

the world, though obscured, was still there,

part of me trusted the illusion.

 

It reminded me of when we were kids

and at slumber parties we’d play the game

“stiff as a board, light as a feather,” in which

one girl would lie in the center of a circle,

and another would tell the spooky story

 

of how the supine girl had died, and how, on her death,

her body was said to be “stiff as a board, light

as a feather,” and the rest of us would slip two fingers

beneath her and carry her about the room.

I knew, of course, that my 100-pound friends

 

were not truly feather light, but we played the game

over and over and swore it was true. There is some thrill

in sharing a myth that defies common sense.

And so today, when I say to my daughter

that we are entering a hidden realm through a veil

 

and she disagrees, I am shocked how disappointed

I am when she doesn’t share the game. In that instant,

the snow is just snow, the day just a day.

There is a joy here, too, in calling things as they are.

A woman. A girl. A storm. A chairlift traveling through.

 

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For an hour today, she practices escaping
from the stairs. There is no jail here,

only our pretense of bars. She,
the bank robber. I the police.

I lock her up again with my invisible
jail cell key. Then I swallow the key,

I throw it away, but she always produces another,
an invisible skeleton key she’s been hiding

somewhere around her and she lets
herself out again, then hovers nearby

to be caught. I feign dismay. She’s
escaped, again! And search for her,

looking right through her. Until,
aha! I say, and grab her. She never

struggles much, almost hurls her body
at me to be caught. So similar to

how I want to be held, forever,
I say, and then the next moment

I long for escape. Oh sweet
imagination, how real it all can seem,

like this girl slipping away from the stairs,
saying for the fourteenth time, catch me again.

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I know she is there hiding
inside the sandwich board,
and she knows I know she is there.

And I know she is the one
tickling my foot while I stand.
And she knows I know it is her.

But for an hour and some,
I hunt for her behind columns,
in windows, inside my sleeves.

I call her name and pout
when she doesn’t appear.
And for an hour and some,

she crouches inside
her small sandwich board tent,
and giggles at not being found.

All around us the people rush past
to work, to lunch, to coffee shops,
to all the places we see each other hide.

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