squinting as a child

there is soft, white, particulate matter
hanging in the air,
like snow without gravity.
sometimes it feels as if i've surrounded myself
with so much of it, I am trapped in a
perpetual cloud of chalk dust.
it's as if I've clapped some erasers together
and the world just froze in that moment.
dry clouds in my eyes that leave me swinging my arms
and grasping for the handrails.
the world a stinging fog.

i sometimes think about Christmas time as a child,
in my parent's old house with the brown shag carpet,
and the really big windows that made me feel so small.
i remember sitting in the living room alone,
squinting my eyes at the Christmas tree,
forcing the lights to bloom and streak within my vision.
i remember when i first realized that i could do this,
that i could make lights smear by squinting my eyes.
that i could change the entire world by something
as simple as pushing my eyelids together.

but now, here i am as an adult, sitting in all this dust,
wondering how i make the world shift again,
with the simplicity and ease that i once did as a child.

when you're an adult, you harden your thinking
to the experiences and environments you've
been exposed to. 
the world doesn't change when you
squint your eyes,
you do not make the world blur,
it is you that change.
it is your eyes that are different. 

although there are exceptions to the rules,
it is my position that the inability to believe
your own fairy tales
and follow your own inner dialogue to
strange and unsual places,
beyond the realms of explanation,
marks the death of
your imagination.

so go make your own fog
and blur the world
with anything but
your own logic and reason.