The smooth path that lies ahead in my mind hurriedly twists to reveal what the future has in store. Beautiful images of many horizons, move about, littered with life. They pause for me to see a marriage on a cloudy afternoon, adorned with tiny droplets of dew. I see the bride's long golden hair and soft white skin peek from behind a door as she hurries on small bare feet down a roughly cobbled path. She carefully slides into a compact garden house down the sodden path behind the church, just escaping the coming rain. The small room is severely disfigured with the excessive amount of mirrored surfaces, adopted for the countless dress fittings, each side reflects another augmenting the small cavity of a room. She slowly moves through the reflections until, in one mirror, she sees herself, and I see that it's me. I duck from the road, blinded by my persistence in wake of a new light. The harsh pictures formed of what I longed for in the past, are now covered by what longs to be faced, urging forward thoughts and denying me that solace of old memories.
I am fighting to stay away from all that I knew. The bend in the road ahead beckons me to take it, to give into my habit. My thoughts turn sideways as I pass the broken road, succumbing to my desire to turn back and meet my old reality afresh. In my mind, I run down empty corridors, race the staircases, and outwit the phantoms that haunt the empty houses. At night, I prowl amongst the shadows born in the moonlight, tease the paintings in their sleep with thin quills, and tag the dreaming suits of armor. The clocks sing to me as the hour of dawn approaches and I revel in their sounds, rather than in those of distant wedding bells.
I feel ashamed to have dreamt again, not forcing what should be into my mind and leaving it there. What I long for drives my life and fills my heart half way. I understand the life that I have given myself isn't a full one, hardly sustaining what energy I have. And yet I think it impossible to look any other way than into the looking glass and hope to find what I lost nearly eight years ago.
To this day in my 24th year of life, I prefer to live in those memories rather than make new ones. I touch my nose to the silver bowl night after night, hardly finding true rest and comfort there, and yet I stay awake in faded memories rather than sleep with new dreams. It kindly eases my thoughts to know that my memories still exist and that they once were my cool clear reality.
But reality has changed. I'm living in a new world where the earth has flattened with technology, reality is scripted, convenience is the most common necessity, magic has lost it's sense, and I have to conform to survive.