We constructed a fantastical palace at night - a fragile palace made of cotton wool and match sticks. A palace with walls, and ceilings, and rooms, and doors. One false move and those walls and ceilings and rooms and doors could cave in. A sentence spoken that should have remained a thought, and there we were, left lying beneath the star spattered sky. And the walls fell, how they fell.
We could always begin again, and so we did, re-building our paper palace. But our words still hung in the air like smog, choking anyone who dared venture into the outside world. The dust settled and so did we, forcing a chalice of rosebuds and thorns down our throats. We were poisoned by the words we didn’t speak, the sentences we dared not utter. The sentences that were still thoughts, forced to the back of our minds and held off by flood gates that might as well have been made of string.
A lesson learnt, and re-learnt; a paper palace will always be made of paper, no matter how much glue and tape you use, tirelessly repairing the tears, refusing to acknowledge that those efforts are in vain.
You can’t build a life on a foundation made of paper, and cotton wool, and match sticks.
- Paper palaces fall down
