Role Play

My costumes and props are imagined,

my stage directions spoken aloud

as I shift through scenes,

playing more roles than one.

The other actors are antagonists

both in character and heart,

for my insistence sounds like silence

and my shouts turn heads the other way.

I am angry like a child

playing pretend on a stage,

surrounded by bigger kids

that don't want to play by the rules.

But should my demands turn to threats

and I rip up the floorboards,

the curtains will fall to the rising sun,

and only I will remain.

And yet, I am still a child,

playing pretend on a stage,

wishing for a grown-up

to come make it right again.

Notes: I learned to lucid dream in college from lying in bed for hours after I woke up, thinking about every little detail of my dreams, but the amount of control I have over everything comes with a specific context. I have had more arguments with dream entities about how they shouldn't have been able to find me instantly when I am both invisible and hidden in something than I can count.

I was at the part in Scott's story where he gets adopted by actually good parents around the time I wrote this. about a week later, I had another one of my lucid dreams where everything happens through miming actions (most annoying kind and it's not even close), but instead of arguing until I woke myself up on purpose in frustration, there was a director that sat me and the dream entities down to get us to compromise. I had friendly conversations with them once we were in agreement, and then I stopped having those dreams completely.