All the things you wish you were

Tell me about the things you wish you were: Cobain’s Fender Mustang, power chords played on instinct. Hemingway’s Royal Quiet Deluxe, pruned words imploring you to dive into the waters below—the cold shock you feel upon emerging. Sylvia’s journals, how she wanted to touch the edges of everything. Van Gogh’s impasto strokes, painted canvases imbued with life. Give me art I could never make myself. Show me how pain creates beautiful things, how mercurial minds bleed themselves dry to give the world color. And when they’re gone, enter the 21st century grief thief with a dime-store social media eulogy. Compile the token sad days. Post the best tear-soaked selfies. Memes for days. Is any of this even real? This grand performance? Or is it just Life: The Movie?

We cheapen everything. Things that used to mean something no longer do. Gen Zers wearing Nirvana smiley T-shirts, hard-pressed to name one song.

Talk to me about fairies and folklore. Tell me stories of the Huldufólk, invisible elves who nest in rocks and traverse two worlds as guardians of the land. Teach my eyes to see them. Then take me to the souvenir shop so I can buy their figurines to place in my garden. Everything can be bought. Even magic.

I want things to stay real and untouched. Crumbling castles. Fossils resting deep in the earth, left unexcavated. Epigraphs that remain unseen by human eyes. Sacred lands unspoiled by development. I want there to be beauty still left to discover. We ruin everything.

If none of this is real, drain my overfiring brain. The degraded synapses. The overblown circuitry. Wipe the slate clean. Anesthetize me. Help me through the simulation.

If none of this is real, it won’t matter that I’m not extraordinary, and that psychiatrists tend to agree. Diagnosis? Just your run-of-the-mill generalized anxiety with a splash of empath. Even my problems aren’t special. No affective disorder to explain the life-long tempestuousness. The little roars of thunder. More of an eye doctor’s problem, really. Just a distorted lens with which I see the world.

Maybe I can make art and magic of that yet. Maybe no one will care enough to ruin it.

All the things you wish you were.