Something Real, Maybe

I have a career in seeing things that are real, surrounded by things that are not real.

It isn't as fun as it sounds.

I wake up every morning to people dying, even though it seems I shouldn't care, as my passage from the living to the nonliving is not moving as abruptly. Sometimes the bombs wake me up in the middle of the night and I can't remember what I was dreaming about even though it felt like I was still awake.

Reality is harder to pinpoint when your dreams are realer than your reality.

I read books in one sitting, and afterward I think for a long time until my thoughts catch up to the world and chemicals balance themselves out and I can pretend that I am just like any of the others.

Sometimes, though, I get to sit in an empty house save for myself and a dog and sing songs that mean something to my soul even when I forget the words. Sometimes I sing to myself, when it's late and the thunder is calling demons whose names I cannot pronounce. I hear my words, and I am real. 

Or I am not real at all.

I can feel the keys under my fingers, click-clack in time with my sputtering thoughts despite the steady thump of the music inside my ears. Real. The story they create, though. Real, some days. Not real, some days. Authenticity, a subject to the master's reality.

I am a king.

The reality changes daily.