Mirage

Experience feels like wandering in a desert

Seeing a mirage of water among the sands

Only to find myself grasping a fistful of grains

And watching even those slip away from my hands

My dreams feel as real as my reality

For in both I live, breathe and feel

And those seem as true as my fantasies

Which allow me to escape and let myself heal.

If all are real, I wonder which one is legitimate

For none of my worlds function as I plan

I have equal power in all

There is nothing I can do, and everything I can.

The truth is as evasive from one to the next

I can’t seem to firmly separate right from wrong in any

There are so many shades that my eyes burn

I need to analyze the angles, and there are so many!

I see myself crashing, smashing the glass

Flailing my arms, screaming to the sky

As I search for answers and ask God why

I am cursed with obsession to find where they lie.

Why do I feel that my fantasies are real?

Why do those dreamlike woods seem so known?

If I woke up from a day spent, did it ever happen?

Do sheets of morality exist, or are they by humans sown?

Reality is what we experience, some say

But we experience much more than reality each day

I wish so desperately to understand this “more”

Before my ashes are sent off the shore.