The Great Pretender

National Poetry Month, Day 18

The Great Pretender

 

Too real is this feeling of make believe…

I’m eight, balanced on the bed

clutching the mahogany bedpost

posing in the mirror

in my mother’s room.

Framed with ornate curlicues of mahogany,

it’s as tall as I am,

like the mirror in Snow White.

I’m a princess on a balcony.

I clutch the silk wisteria, so pleasingly purple

and flowingly pliable.

I bow to the figure in the mirror

 

Imitation yes the great pretender,

Fake, unreal, constructed,

Created, mimic, mime is mine.

I notice

Tinny sound of fake things.

Imitation vanilla extract tastes metallic,too.

I’m a chameleon, a

leonine chamomile

millennium  imitation. I

Live in the cave cast by the

Morning Glory, I

live in the tunnel

dug by the groundhog in my garden, whose dirt

lives under my fingernails, whose bugs

lives in the folds of the mattress.

 

I also pretend

to be a poet.