A Toast to Imagination

Cristina Leone

Image by Amy Shamblen via Unsplash

Here’s to a generation of women

who’ve come of age believing

that our truest selves are counterfactuals

walking paths from which we’ve long since diverged

and to which we can never return.

Here’s to sitting quietly

with the loneliness of missing

the people we never were,

to living life

as an apology for all we are not –

as a breathless, defiant attempt to fill this odd chasm

left behind by the loss of the idea

of potential.

Here’s to knowing

imagination’s ruthless underbelly

with more intimacy than we’ve ever known

what is here before our eyes.

And here is to learning

to lie

to ourselves, and each other

about how and why we came

to hate ourselves, and each other

and about where the forgiveness must start

in the end.