Lewis Carroll to the rescue

Hey there. I've been struggling a bit with writing lately. I've written a few things, but they were pretty awful melodramatic crap. I kind of like this one, though, so I thought I'd share.

Children's Literature
"'And what is the use of a book' thought Alice 'with no pictures or conversation.'"
-Lewis Carroll

Again, it seems to be all about you.
In my dream today you were living, but only barely.
You were sinking faster than I could imagine despite knowing you were already gone.
My reality fades a bit under such pressure until I am half convinced I'm living in my own poorly written novella.

One of my big secrets is that I used to play pretend after I crawled into bed.
I would be turning to the left, bouncing my leg, humming under my breath
Until I settled into a fiction that required me to lay still.
I would imagine playing some car crash victim, comatose, surrounded by people praying for me to wake up
As I would fall asleep in some imagined quiet.
I wish that I could say that I played the heroine, but no heroine waits quietly for something and besides
I was never the heroine type.

Sometimes I close my eyes and for just a moment it all slips away and I am something
Different.
Where do you run,
What haven is there for someone who's imagination lures them from reality?

I have always wondered why I felt so radically different from everyone else.
I was the only 11 year old I knew who thought about things like last will and testament.
For a lifetime my grasp of reality has felt tenuous and brief.
And yet I function, almost daily, in this world written by someone else.
The horror makes me wish I could cry out more often with explosive release
But such profound simplicity escapes me.

And it's all about you,
Or all about me,
Or all about where I went wrong on this page.

*********

I was considering the title "Down the Rabbit Hole" but this line from the book seemed rather appropriate. I might change the official title, but it seemed a little redundant after using the quote. And while I am trying to 'grow' my poem titles a little, the whole quote seemed a little long.

Unless you knew me way, way back when my titles could be longer than the poems themselves. Don't worry, it's a phase that has come and gone. Good riddance.