The Confession
🧚♀️
For my dear niece and fellow believer! 💕
With love 💖
*
Do you believe in fairies🧚♀️?
A little one asks
And like always, I return the question,
Do you?
*
And there flashes across the little face
A discomfort
That comes when you are positioned to justify
The existence of that which is not real to another
*
They have dared me
To ask you
If you believe in fairies.
She points to a group of more little ones
*
And I see them standing at a distance
Ardently anticipating my answer
That would confirm or reduce to nothing
Their dearly held narrative of it.
*
Scientifically, she attempts,
You can now prove they exist.
People have seen them flying
Over the House of God.
*
And I smile as she seeks
Religious legitimacy
For a fiction
That has none.
*
Do you have to prove something scientifically
For you to believe it exists? I ask
What if you can’t prove they exist?
Would you stop believing in them?
*
And you see the little face struggle
With the tough decision
To give in to a dull public consensus on the matter
Or believe in the joy of her own narrative of it.
*
If people don’t believe in it, she explains
How can we make them believe in it?
Who are the people who don’t? I ask again
Does it matter if they don’t?
*
And she thinks about it
And processes the enormity of the choice she has
And the possibility of letting go of all worries
By making it
*
I do not need people, I affirm,
To believe in something
That I can imagine
And they cannot.
*
If I believe in them
It means I can see them
And imagine them
And make stories out of them
*
Stories
Which are not true
Or real
For others
*
But which are beautiful
And
True
For me
*
As long as they matter to me
It’s okay
If they do not matter to others
Does that make sense?
*
And she nods and silently looks deep into my eyes
Knowing they were not wide shut
Like the others
Does that mean you believe in fairies?
*
And I smile and let her peer
Into my mirror
Which reflects back to her
The confidence of an unapologetic believer.
*
And I lean close
And whisper
The most important words of the moment
I do.
*
29.07.2018
