Goodbye Imaginary Friend

You were my companion in the way beginning
When I couldn’t get the world to center me in its arms
And when the nuns and priests
Made the formal introduction
Complete with strategies for survival

We continued together until
I kicked you out decades later
And padded through the desert
Until life got scarier than ever.

And then you showed up
Wearing a different face and a different robe
And I hooked arms with you
As we scaled the mount of mystery
Confident that reality was just ahead.

But I didn’t realize it was just underfoot,
A convenient tripstep that dashed my daze
And when I looked up you weren’t there.
Were you ever? No.
You were always imaginary,
Always the figment shaped like my fear
Tuckpointing my doubts with dust.

You died and left no progeny
Left me instead alone out here
On the windy plain of just-so,
Keeled over like an exorcee
Dumbstruck but delirious with expectation.

Reality is life balanced on a blade edge,
Inching along, an old worm working on wings.
Mumbling oh no oh my god I know now I KNOW:
We are the wings
Barely emerging, twitching to shrug off
This earthen encasement,
Wracking the whole worm with our struggle
To break free of it before it falls.