Imagine

When I was seventeen,

my mother said to me

"Don't stop imagining. The day that you do is the day that you die."

-Youth Lagoon

In my imagination:

I still think I'm the most important man on the planet. 

I'm taller in my mind than I am in the mirror. 

Sometimes I imagine other people watching my life like it was a movie. Why they don't change the channel, I have no idea. 

I think spiders are out to get me. 

I think there's a spider behind me right now. 

MIrrors are somehow scarier in the dark. 

In my imagination:

When I exhale, all the bad energy leaves my body. Same thing happens when I pee. 

Everyone at the pool is obsessed with what I look like with my shirt off. They sit around and laugh and have little conversations about me. 

Every blog post ever written was written about me. 

In my imagination:

Love is real. 

My parents like me more than my sister. 

The neighbors are having more fun than we are. 

Our hearts are bigger than our whole bodies. They hold everyone we love and all the places we've been, they're full of everything we ever wanted to be and all the good things that have happened to us and the bad things too. 

In my imagination I'm fast. 

All the guys I play basketball with on Tuesday and Wednesday nights want me to keep shooting. 

The moon is real. It's not just for poets and astronauts. It's for welders and school teachers. One day a bunch of us will live there and they'll even have stop lights.

In my imagination dead people go to their own funerals. 

I have eyes in the back of my head and I can see everyone talking about me. 

Everyone has more money and boats and square footage and iPhones and trucks than I have. 

Nobody poops. My wife doesn't poop and my parents don't poop and the President of the United States doesn't poop in the White House and Tom Hanks doesn't poop and Beyonce definitely does not poop. 

In my imagination our shadows still exist in the shade.

There's a booger in my nose and my zipper's down and there's something in my teeth and my breath is horrible and I have B.O. and sweat pits and everything else you can think of. 

I look intelligent and pensive when I bite my nails, not like a crackhead looking for a fix. 

That loud boom was an attack. 

It only rains when I wash my car. 

Everything I say is funny. 

All my dreams are interesting to other people. 

My fantasy football team is interesting to other people.

In my imagination all my moles are getting bigger. 

In my imagination we will live forever. 

In my imagination bad things will only happen to other people. 

I can understand things I can't hold in my hand.