Magical Realism

Magical Realism. A literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy.

I wish it had never been named. A name has sharpened it, has refined its presence into solid crystals that shimmer, nestled in the folds of my everyday. I hate that shimmer. With every spark, I'm a bit farther away from reality.

As I stare out into the room now, the edges of my vision begin to blur, darkening, dancing. The ceiling slowly starts to melt down into the seats, like tear tracks down dry cheeks. I flinch and blink hard, promising myself it's just a blood pressure issue, a low resting heart rate, something else with a name I can hold onto.

For a few blissful moments, the world stays put. Then, ever so slowly, it starts to drip again. The streaks grow into rivers of colors I can't name. The colors turn into a memory, then a smell, a feeling, and back again. I don't fight it. I can't. I think I'm losing my mind.

Cleaning

The piles of junk and stacks of half finished books have sat long enough to start to stew in their own personalities. The lumpy mass of jackets thrown over the rocking chair has grown to be motherly and comforting, while the torn, faceless book on the nightstand is a jealous cynic.

I was determined to clean, to scour, to renew. I thought I'd feel better then. But I couldn't bring myself to trash memories, so I stored them.

Faces trapped under frames were shut in cardboard tombs, and stacked in the closet. Too far away to keep up, too soon to throw away. In the picture, she's still my best friend. In the picture, he still loves me. In the pictures are the people I know.

As the stacks shrink, the room falls off balance, as though the empty space is yearning for exactly what it's not. The dizziness and distortion are overwhelming, and I sit amidst the personalities of trash, and the ghosts of personalities in pictures, knowing that really, there's nothing there at all.

Book Flask

The first few words bead on my chapped lips, and I lick them off hungrily. As words become sentences, sentences phrases, and phrases ideas, the droplets grow to a steady stream. I gulp at them hungrily, letting the surfeit dribble down my chin.

The flavor lingers after I've shut the book, sitting heavily in my mouth and mind. Instead of being swallowed and finished, it has soaked into everything it touched, and now leaks slowly out. I'm soggy and full, like a sponge having absorbed to the utmost.

My foggy, drunken mind remains caught between reality and fiction, struggling to pull back to the former. The story is disturbing, a dark and heavy flavor, and I'm caught beneath it. Drowning under someone else's fictitious weight.