Sometimes I think things...

Tall, juniper soldiers stand, shoulder-to-shoulder, guarding seeming simplicity from prying eyes. I lie with my belly pressing an indention into cool grass and moist soul. I peer carefully around the ankles of the soldiers. Rough, brown branches and a prickly exterior. Keeping the outside out but only barely containing my fiery heart. Passion. Screams. Unparalleled truth and beauty. Throwing itself against high garden walls. Past the dirty creeping toes of my green guardians, only hot pavement and long shadows are visible.

A fortress. Inside lives another world. Among blades of grass, pixies battle age-old disputes while faeries dance with tinkling bells in ancient step around the captive pixie princess and all my five-year-old gods and goddesses whisper truths of earthly and heavenly beauties into my ears. Underneath the pressing, silent heat of the summer day, a thousand tiny voices hum inside my head. Inside my heart. Faeries that try to breach my towering fortress fry on the unforgiving sidewalk next to a rainbow of my melted crayons and a candy wrapper someone left behind as they fled from the magical land of suburbia. Best to wait for the cooler months to leave the haven of my world. Or perhaps, just then, there was no safe place in the outside for my imaginings. Swimming around in my colorful brain. Nesting in the bushes. Creeping around in the grass grown tall in the abundant summer sun. On the outside, they are nothing but thoughts. In my hedged sanctuary: nothing but truths that are never to be tainted by the poison of society’s madness.