when all you know is the inversion

let's play pretend, let's dress up, wear mommy's shoes as mommy asks and pretend this is all right. we're not six anymore but maybe we are, maybe we will be forever but after all it's just pretend. let's watch romantic movies and kid ourselves that our only failures are in love and loss, the ordinary things, because you're above all that, aren't you, in this fairy tale you've designed?

let's pretend we know what love really is and are not merely acquainted with its absence, it's negation, and let's pretend so long our lies become truths because memory can be altered, you know, and shan't we add in one more character, a symbolic golden-eyed child in a short pink dress, designed to bind it all together?

and who then is left to save you when in this world of make-believe you were created to be the only unsung expected heroine?