Squint a bit. Dim the lights. Things are better this way.  Stark reality is too much. 

Details peeling away, empty space collecting dust. First attempts are almost always failures. 

Upside down smiles served daily, Stepping over one another towards an abyss. We are all chasing rainbows. 

This here and now. It is instantly replaced with a tomorrow we do not know. Lock yourself in for a 20 year high interest yield or rent and be displaced at the whim of a landlord. Start a business, feel the stress of responsibility and the freedom of being able to take a day off, or go an office, put your head down and do your job. Collect that paycheck. Either way you are caught. An imaginary fence, created by feelings and rules that we cannot see but feel. We scream when we take our first breath and sigh with our last. 

Complaining helps to get the poison out. Large thunderstorms arrive after oppressive heat, earthquakes from moving plates. Stymying from the annoyance of people trying to lure your time and money along with your attention and your information, the pressure builds. Jabs from the wife to improve while others gain speed on you. Fancy dresses, younger women, faster cars all showing you what you are missing. The fissures appear, the cracks are real.

But then we coast. Throw our hands in the air, regard our situations in a different light and remind ourselves that it is fine. A deep breath, the monkey mind calms, a phone rings and it is your friend asking you to meet. You sit across from him or her, not certain you even match in this game of show and tell, but you settle for the reality of it all. For your place in line. You have a laugh, the day ends soon. Best to put all these hysterics on the side for a moment, time is running short. What nonsense to be bogged down with scenarios and places you will never be. People you will never become and monsters that were never present. But it all seemed so real.