Let’s Pretend, Just for a While

Come, sit with me for a moment.
Let’s pretend this is a game.
I’d like to give my pain another name,
a different shape.
Something ordinary enough
to make sense of.

Today, my pain is a book I’ve kept aside.
It waits without complaint.
A bookmark tucked in, quietly.
I’ll return when my hands are steadier,
when my heart has the patience it needs.

The ache in my heart is origami paper.
Soft. Colourful. Yielding.
I shape it with my hands,
slow, precise movements coaxing form into being.
Intricacy and complication becoming something unexpectedly beautiful.

My sadness now is a splinter,
a minor irritation eased out with a pin
and flicked aside without ceremony.
Sharp relief settles in.
My body remembers it can stop flinching.
This pain will not return.

I am locking my grief in a drawer,
an old photograph turned face down.
The key stays with me.
I decide when it opens.
And maybe one day,
I’ll be able to turn the photo over
and look at it without being undone.

Right now, my sorrow is a weed.
It doesn’t blend in.
I recognise it immediately,
yank it free at the root,
relieved that I’ve removed the problem entirely.
The garden stays as it is.
Nothing else is disturbed.

But pain is none of these things.
It follows no rules.
It refuses to pause when asked.
and is not content to be hidden away.

This was never really a game.
Just a way to breathe for a moment.
A small escape before reality insists on being faced.

And when it does,
I will face it the best I can.
For now,
standing still is enough.