I Wonder

I wonder what will happen to the Shaman in my head, the little boy who still hasn't figured out who his people are, the one who returned the shadows to their bodies, the one who scared away the tommyknocker with the help of his brother bear.

I wonder what will happen to the wizard in my head, the vagrant who whistled cider into existence, who turns his lovers into nymphs and ice eagles, who plays music that tells the story of the beginning of humans and the death of magic, who travels with the silver dog whose eyes burn blue.

I wonder what will happen to the bridge in my head, the girl who unlocked the fremont troll, who outsmarted puck and saved her boggart, who marked her own forehead with the unbreakable seal.

I wonder what will happen to the poet in my head, the hopeless romantic who joined forces with the cowboy and the scientists, the one with the flying monkey, who saved the princess and defeated the lich, but lost his leg in the process.

I wonder what will happen to the strong one in my head, the woman who opened the forbidden door, who unlocked a lifetime of pain, who saw things she never asked to know, who was erased, but refused to be forgotten, who may be the salvation of her eraser.

I wonder what will happen to the werewolf in my head, the fiction who scares my friends every Halloween, who gibbers and creeps, who leaves just enough up to the imagination.

As I get older, and as I learn to live in the world outside my head a little bit more than the world inside it, as I learn about attachment and z-scores, missiology and marriage, as I spend less and less time with my old buddy Neil, as I fall farther and farther behind on the adventures of my beloved Constantine, as I begin to dream more and more of schedules and schoolwork, and less and less about faeries and fireflies, I wonder what will happen to the stories that only live in my own head.

I guess I’ll throw them out into the world and hope that they take seed in someone else’s mind, or at the very least, take them somewhere else, somewhere closer to the truth but father from reality. I wonder if they’ll find anything worth keeping.