did you vanish into something ethereal and gone for a moment then back like the flickering fluorescent lights barely noticeable in old clinical rooms waiting to be pulled apart limb by limb - are you hiding from the reality of what is what was what could would should be? you said not to and you’re doing it anyway, letting your mind take the reins and pull you far from the path you set out for yourself, lost in the thicket of brown and grey and blue and green again and mostly green and orange like the changing autumn leaves; they make me think of you - “make me”.  it’s the other green i hate.  the frothy green of the Atlantic ocean that bubbles ashore and you can’t stop it’s waves and it filters through all of your filters and seethes and takes residence holed up in the deep recesses of your mind and every once in a while takes a walk through your memories, unlocking cabinets, pulling out words long swept up and put away.  mind-reality is a mess dislodged from the reality i enjoy. the reality of you and me and summer and the changing seasons of wind swept hair and sun soaked skin - hours and days and weeks spent in the daylight in the moonlight under fluorescent lights of galleries and the strobe lights of concerts. and somehow all that is good is running parallel to all that had gone wrong.  ”make me”? no one “made me”.  i was absent when they took roll call; when they took names and asked for qualifications, my mind was spinning with freedom. there and gone and there and gone and mostly gone - i assure you.  i just waited for the time to pass; waited in an alternate reality to quell the riots already taking form. i let myself forget; for the first time i made myself forget that they had to, one day, merge.