Getting Serious

Perhaps one day I'll be serious.

Perhaps one day I'll
get a house
get a mortgage
get a car
get a suit
get a promotion
get a husband
get tied down
get some perspective
and get serious.

Perhaps one day I'll see a treat
as extra tomatoes on a salad,
will care for my figure
for my appearance
as though nothing else in the world mattered -
as if art, music, and intelligence didn't matter.

One day,
I might forget how to play pretend
or how to make up new worlds,
how to make people smile or laugh just with words.

I might put all of my poems,
my stories, my scripts,
my silliness
my ambitions, my hopes, my desires
into a solid serious box
in a sturdy stern drawer,
leave the pages to fade
and embrace cold, harsh reality
once and for all.

Perhaps one day I'll forget how to have fun.

I'll be another insignificant person
in a crowd of insignificant people
who've locked their dreams away
their creativity away
their innocence away
to focus on "the things that really matter".

Perhaps one day I'll be boring.

Well, today is not that day.

Today I'll wear my washed-out jeans
with the trainers with the worn-out soles
and have messy hair.

Today, I'll walk in the spring sunlight
and laugh
and sing
and look at all the pretty things
in large shop windows.

I'll see a stage not merely
as a secure wooden structure
but as a playground, a portal
to new and brighter worlds.
I will don a costume of fine fabric
with all the colours of the spectrum
and recite words - mine or someone else's -
with flash
with panache
and have conversations with non-existent people
like the imaginary friends of my childhood.

Today, I'll forget about work when I clock off
and will have cupcakes and tea
as I sit at a café table
in happy bliss
imagining what it would be like
if all the world was like this -
if everyone could feel safe
and at peace
and feel wanted
and respected
as I want us all to be.

As I pray we all will be.