I'm in a peculiar mood tonight. I want to write letters and sign them with a false name. I want to invent a memoir, act an outlaw or a timid debutante, remember pieces of a past life as Cleopatra. In short, I want to play pretend and wander into a world unreal but tangible, rich with detail for this other momentary-me. Failing that, I want daylight again and a shadowy spruce plot or a bee-buzzing garden or a crab apple orchard snowy with blossom in which to wander. I want my friends at recess, pretending with me, the game as real to them as it is to me.

If I am Maid Marian, who are you? And what if we are Muses? Or Valkyries? And are we dragons or the knights who challenge them? Am I a doctor selling snake oil in the Wild West? An astronaut or an android? And if we pass beneath this bow of crab apple blooms, do we shimmer into another world?

I hope so.

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