Reflecting the Illusion

I wonder if Mary Lou thought about suffocation when she built the walls in her husband’s memory. Perhaps that’s what drove her to it, a display of her burden, or perhaps to make the world understand.

Closed. Encompassed. Confined. These walls are built to provide ever source of sustainability, rocks to perch, water to drink, plants in all colors to mirror our beauty, reflect the illusion.

But I’m fading.

The showcase, like the glossy pages of a magazine. They sit and think “Oh how pretty” buying into the falsehood of happy. They want to believe the image, believe in the honeymoon, He’s a nice guy,

What did I do? They ask.

2700 square feet. Seven months, two weeks. These walls are screened. I can feel what lies beyond reach but I know he’s never far behind. They still think it’s for him. A loving memory of a time spent in love and virtue to death do they part but no. We are here. A continual reminder of the life that he lived. Sarah would never approve. She wanted the life the raw nature the freedom of growth. But not here,

here we are what they tell us.

They come in, strangers to our world, ignorant of the life we are forced to live but cant escape. Buying into the illusion, actors of the spectacle, a false smile, a timid laugh, they will never see more deeply.

Swallowtail struggles now,

His blue color fading a paling grey sickens him. An expression of the confines inside. They say winter approaches, all an illusion, he’s finally free.