Road of No Return

I travelled through dust, smog, and heat,

To reach that place, nearly a thousand miles away,

To see my family home and the people inside.

I saw nothing but sad mannequins in a shop window,

Pushing me away, drifting further off,

Afraid to speak, to love, to care,

Gossiping behind my back, plotting terrible things,

Things that, years later, finally came to light.

They buried the true reasons deep,

The essence of their actions, uncompromising,

Matters more important than any single life,

Stakes so high they transcended existence itself.

No one could possibly grasp

What matters more than anything on this earth:

Immortality, life after death,

What we do to leave a mark behind.

They have children, other people to love,

I have only my fictional worlds,

Where people crowd the pages like flocks of pigeons,

Swapping roles and places,

Where characters discover the meaning of their existence,

Weeping and laughing, gaining and losing.

I give them a piece of myself and my own traits,

Letting them live in my stead.

If the real world hurts so much, I believe this is the way

To keep going, to keep caring

Not for people who never cared about me,

But for the characters who have lived in my mind so long,

Giving them a chance to bloom, and perhaps, one day, they will let

Me bloom as well.