Bubbles

Bubbles drifted across the streets,

Soft spheres of prismatic light masking faces,

Bending reality ever-so-slightly,

To make everything seem… easier.

 

From above — if anyone was watching,

Which I presume the birds of the sky often do —

We must look utterly absurd.

 

Humans, wandering aimlessly around,

Following a path that only exists within a bubble,

Chasing after a perfection crafted only in a dream.

They try to mould themselves into shapes they thought they ought to be,

Believing that the blurry world around them would suddenly praise them.

 

Some chase after a certain physique — a disturbing perfection,

Some a beauty so delicate, one crumb will make it shatter,

Some a life of impossible extravagance only fairy tale princes acquire.

 

But when it finally bursts,

A goal half-achieved,

A moment as sharp as lightning,

They pause, 

Blinking as reality rushed back in,

A tidal wave crashing upon them.

Was the time and effort really worth it?

 

For some, yes.

Another bubble would appear,

Bright, seductive, innocent —

Inviting another gamble at an impossible goal trapped outside reality.

 

For others,

A quiet dilemma arose;

Glancing around at those around them,

Wondering how a second ago, 

They too were chasing after a goal which only now seems useless,

A drunken man finally grasping a reality too late to regret.

And yet, no one can truly say what is truly right.

Because reality —

Even in its clearest, sharpest moments,

When you know, in complete clarity,

That in that moment you did what was right,

Often times than not, 

Looking back at it,

You realise,

Oh no,

I messed up. 

 

But by then,

When the realisation hits,

When the regret kicks in,

Its too late,

Too late to change the past,

To change a wrong that only now seemed so easy to avoid.

 

And there comes a time in life,

Laying there on your bed,

Eyes half drifting off to sleep,

As regrets of the past,

Millions of them,

Rush back into your mind.

An irresistible urge to punch something arises in your body,

“How could I have been so wrong back then?”

“What in the world was I thinking?”

“Was I even thinking?”

But you know that you can never change it, 

So anger erupts within you.

 

However,

For the sake of sleep,

You finally yield —

Against the growing urges to scream, to unravel —

Tucking those regrets away into the past,

Where they linger, patient and unspent.

Perhaps they will return,

And ravage the mind back into a frenzy,

But for tonight,

They rest.

 

For those who chase after the shimmer of fragile bubbles,

For those who lie awake, restless beneath the weight of reality,

Perhaps the answer is to choose neither.

Not to live foolishly within an illusive paradise,

Nor to be hunted down from dawn to dusk by the thoughts inside your head,

But to let go of both,

To exist unbound from reality,

For it was never mercilessly cruel nor effortlessly serene.

 

Finally liberating oneself from the chains of a perception of reality —

Moulded to fit what society deemed as right or wrong —

You can feel the world as is.

The winds that once cooled you down like that of a gentle fan,

And those which,

When the bubble popped,

Bullied you down as if you were merely an obstacle in its way,

Now seemingly brush past you,

Blowing stray strands of hair in and out of your vision.

It’s up to your own interpretation of whether the wind was benign as if in a bubble —

The delicate hands of a mother gently brushing your hair —

Or harsh as if intentionally becoming a nuisance for you.

That’s the true reality,

Never wrong,

Never right,

It gives you the space to choose who you want to be,

Not one sugar-coated in shimmering bubbles,

Nor a harsh ‘truth’ that doesn’t actually exist.

 

And I choose to be that — free and unbound.