“Collectible Item”

The idea of myself, constantly distorted in the minds of others, remains clear and transfixed in the pools behind my eyes.

A watery figure, she remains held within a snow globe, but still, she is there. Yet the water grows murkier, lesser, as the days pass.

How can you be painfully young and woefully old at the same time?

I find myself becoming increasingly like a collectible that never reached its promise of success, passed with disdain atop a dust-covered shelf.

A child myself, yet my age, decidedly adult. My appeal the same.

In my slumber, I cover myself with my Grandmother’s blanket.

I am reminded that false realities preserved by synthetic love are among the few that can remain sustained.