Illusion – A Dash of Sunny

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what if the life we lived

the stuff we fret on

the hopes and joys in which we revel,

the envies and jealousies to which we are subject

like little ships tossed on a violent sea,

 what if they were but a dream

 – a fantasy

 – an illusion

a facsimile of a real life?

what if we, ourselves, were but a fiction?

would we change?

would we hang up our hats at the door to our lives

and just give up?

or would we carry on, regardless,

because that’s what life is –

experiencing, tasting, touching, wanting, needing, hurting –

for without all of that, we are nothing?


 

This week on A Dash of Sunny, we are asked to write on dreams. Again, I’ve taken a sideways step – rather than sharing my dreams, I’m playing the ‘what if?’ game. What if our lives are but a dream, and not really ‘real’?

Do hop on over to A Dash of Sunny, and find out what others have done! Or… take part!

Traces – Līgo Haibun Challenge

Ever in the market to try new things in the writing world, I have decided to dip my toe in the world of the haibun – a piece of prose followed by a haiku poem. The Līgo Haibun Challenge is hosted by Penny and Ye Pirate – why not take a trip to their blogs to find out more?

This week’s two alternative prompts are Ecstacy and Illusion. I have chosen Illusion, since this does rather reflect how life feels in my slice of this good earth. I hope you enjoy it.

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– Traces –

The memory of you lingers, a breath suspended in the frozen air. You are ethereal, a wraith barely visible in the depths of my mind. I reach out, desperate to grasp hold of you. Like a fire it burns – the need to feel the skin of your hand, the smoothness of your fingernails, the rough patch where you rasped your knuckle on the garden gate. All of those details, the minutiae that passed me by, now they are what I search for, relentlessly.

I see you every day – a face in the crowd, a gesture, a tone of voice. I turn swiftly, yearning to catch in the corner of my eye the proof that you are still here. It was all a dream. I have woken, relief engulfing me, arousing me from the acres of sleep into which I have walked, unannounced and unwanted. But you are still gone. Remnants of you are mannerisms, cruelly reflected in my mirror, flat and unsympathetic. I don’t find comfort in the shadows of you.

your voice remains here

in my mind it echoes

joy embrace my lost heart.

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