pretend what's real

Thank you for the kind effort,
giving me

an alternative narrative to believe,

but I prefer to pretend what's real.
Or what people tell me is real. It's more
disappointing sometimes, like bleak
foreign films without a soundtrack, but

I find something satisfying
and lifelike about it.

Lifelike: a virtue we prize
in art more than life, arguably

But I can always point
to the time in my life -
one long montage of walks in the park
eating hot dogs and laughing,

shorthand for falling in love
with you

and say "it is unrealistic to live

expecting life to be this way,

or when it inarguably, empirically is,

expecting it to stay,"