Pretend

I quietly watch her, thoughtfully this time, and obscured by tartan curtains in a circle window as the miniature rose-colored girl in tights takes another invisible someone by the hand. The air smells like the rain, and the washing of earth has ended. She imagines a blue forest behind her, and the expanse of the sea ahead. The sandbox is left vacant on the patio for these things; the hammered tin slide with red stripes is abandoned for something less real, less tangible. She leads him to a stone and cedar bark prepared table with place settings of empty leaves: brilliantly crafted plates from little thoughts that first saw them, and saw rocks that looked worthy of being served as delicacies at her lonesome occasion. The gathering in the courtyard she would host in honor of ceased rain, and I watch from a window that seems to be made for quiet onlookers who are not invited, who are no longer transparent, and who have forgotten somehow the way to pretend.
I hear her conversing quietly with her guests, soft murmurs caught up in the summer air and carried to this window, while she serves glassy pebbles stolen from the riverbed, and small fragments of leaves accompanied by imported puddle water - brewed to a tepid, childlike perfection. Her personified stranger does not ever speak but gives her sufficient company, as always, beneath the ever-weeping willow that shelters their midmorning feast. She seems to need nothing more than this – nothing other than sweet promises of daylight and swing sets and purple chalk to map her journey. How simple is this lifestyle that thrives behind the wooden fence, and how foreign it seems to me. I watch as she seats herself atop a miniature tree stump, cushioned with verdant moss, and rolled into place with her meticulous effort to a table fit for make-believe kings. Her bouquets of tired dandelions and wilting grass blades adorn the table, upheld only by dried cakes of earth. She is crowned with links of tiny daisies that dub her princess, the kind you never forget how to make, and the kind your fingers outgrow when you stop pretending.
From my window I gaze into something of a time capsule, a spinning kaleidoscope of everything that fashions the fabric of her beginnings. The colored pieces lock into place and make the present, make a radiant memory that I cannot reach out and touch, though I try. No one can see it but me and the little girl seated at the wooden table. Creation is her throne, and here in this sanctuary in the center of town, she reigns beside a quiet, unseen prince. What does he look like? Where has he gone? This must have been the day I died; I do not remember growing up.