My imagination always sucked, I thought. I could carry on for hours in some little world of my own. That wasn't how to judge imagination; imagination was about quality, not quantity. While enough to keep me entertained as a child, there was no way that the simple creation of nonexistent worlds of magic with dragons and all the video game crap would have kept me entertained now that I was 16. I had no use for this child's game. The mental images I had were not as vivd as I thought they should be, all just a lacquer to embellish some image somebody else had already made.

So I rolled back on my overly-stuffed mattress on my overly-made bed with overly-firm pillows, trying to figure out what to do. I wanted to use my mind; maybe something will come to me as I create and manage this world of mine. Maybe the world will become a world of its own with no master, bigger than a mere dreamer could comprehend. That's been the dream: create a world with letters that actually surprises me, the author sometimes. A place that has a mind of its own. But that wasn't working.

Maybe just recall a memory, then? I could polish and change it and view it over again, tweaking the details until it was a craft of my imagination. That would suffice. At least it was entertainment. At that moment I remembered that I never wanted to replay any memory worth changing; they jerked cords in my emotional system that I didn't want to fall out.

So that was it, then. Nothing to do but sleep. Breathe deeply. Remember to use your entire respiratory system; it truly calms you. Five of these fairly time-consuming breaths and I was nodding off. I happily succumbed to slumber's call. All of a sudden, there was a burst of blue; my imagination had sparked. Damn, why now when I actually WANTED to get to sleep? It was too late now; had to see where my imagination took me. This flash of blue was now a mere dot in a blindingly black void, perpetually disintegrating and regenerating before my eyes. It was anything but a mere random pattern. Actually, this ongoing activity made it look like...water. Yes, a sphere of swirling, pale blue water. Calm, inviting, kind...suddenly the sphere was no longer liquid; it was the iris in a younger woman's eye. Time was still. For this moment, all I saw was her eyes. The gaze was locked. Like a slow rumble, time resumed. The gaze was a part of a two-second acknowledgment of each others' existence. She walked on into an old brown two-story building with a sign saying, "Sorry, we're CLOSED" in its window. A basketball whizzed by my head, grabbed by the tall and thin brown-haired guy right next to me.

I knew this place...this was a memory. As if I were right there, actually playing with them. The breeze ruffled my hair, cooling my sweaty body, refreshing each guy out on the pavement playing Crunch. The oak trees danced their slow sway to the rhythm of this zephyr, the nearby fountain gurgled its water and we felt its moist air. I could actually smell the damp mixture of grass and water; I could SMELL it. No, not RECALLING the smell, SMELLING it. I was back...this was the place I'd longed to be back at even before I ever left. For three or four weeks I had been pining to go back there, wishing I could be back with these close friends. This was the first place I had ever been accepted because of who I really was; this was the first place I had never held back my true personality. Oh, sweet joy! The greatest week of my life, and here I was again, reliving it.

I had learning so much, changed so much...just in the span of a week. My thoughts are totally different now, they had been so self-indulgent and pointless before this week in this park. But...this wasn't this week. I recalled none of what was happening. I remembered almost every single second of that entire week, but I didn't remember this. It was as if...the small little shelter from the world that had been constructed had never dumped us back into the hustle and bustle of real life. A surge of joy ran through me as if my veins were electrical circuits; I was here in my favorite place in the world forEVER! I exuberantly bounded after the basketball.

Five minutes later, this place seemed stale. What was wrong with me? With it? With the picture? Had I forgotten something? No...my friends, my leaders, everything was here. So what was it? How come I grew tired of it? Wouldn't this world be better than ever having to go back home?

And suddenly I realized that it HAD to have ended. Why were we dumped back to reality? The harshness, the persecution for our less-than-selfish ideas? To change it! We knew, it was our job to share it now. Forever expanding our horizons, ever being submerged in discomfort for the change we wished to see. The prayer said with only a candle for light? I felt no God. I felt no comradery. I only felt like it was a prayer, generic, jumbled, rehashed phrases that were old and insignificant. Nothing new would ever happen here. This place would never really repeat what had happened during my real week, but nothing new would ever come. This was blah. I smiled sadly as the game we played that would never happen ended. A round of capture-the-flag was played and never heard by the people across the street because it wasn't real. There were smiles, there was laughter, all of it new, all of it familiar, none of it real.

Now I realized...I could never be happy forever; I had to grow. This place made me grow, but this sameness would have left me no better off than before. I'd never have to challenge my beliefs if I stayed here. People around me said things they had said a million times, but why was this one so unnatural? They didn't actually say it. My yearning, my desire did. My mind wanted to be here again; my imagination showed me what would happen.

Slowly, people around me began to fade. The young woman came out of the building, smiling sadly. We all had to say goodbye. Life was happening; to not go back would be to avoid living. To stay stuck would be to never really live again. As she walked by, our gaze once again met. She turned to face me. Suddenly time froze again, but the echoes of laughter and talk echoed in my mind. As memories; as those things, as happy moments are meant to remain. Slowly the young woman faded away, too. Now I only saw the sphere again. Now it was the dot. Now there was nothing. I opened my eyes. The sun shone brightly. There was a single tear running down my cheek, warm and wet against my skin. So...this was what it's like to move on, to live life without.

As I drifted into my nap, I thanked my imagination.