To Be a Real Rabbit

I didn't like The Velveteen Rabbit much as a kid. I thought it was sad. But it's an interesting concept--the idea that love makes you real.

I work. He works. We work together, but are never really together. The "us" we created is something we miss. Who we used to be as individuals has faded into what we have become, and we miss them too.

Self lies in the shadows
a well read book, tattered around the edges
long since touched with broken hands
a tale etched into our bones
memorized by our souls
a small burning fire in the storm of cold
worn pages waiting patiently
long since read
but written permanently into our minds
like ink on the skin
a story
a memory
a feeling
a being
real.

We tend to live within the constructs we create, whatever version of reality we choose to believe or find ourselves living. This is considerably more difficult when there is pain. Cold. Love. Blood. Death. Birth. Because some things are beyond the box, beyond the construct, beyond the containment that we so carefully immerse ourselves in on a daily basis.

Maybe we make magic real.
Maybe magic makes us real.
Maybe love and pain and death and birth and cold are magic.
Maybe belief makes magic real.
Maybe, like the silly little velveteen rabbit, the belief that love makes us real is our true magic.

I have realized that I have no interest in a life without the magic of us.
In a life where the excess of mental anguish comes without the magic of real pain.
In a life where no one dares to be different or let others see that they bleed.

We lay together late at night
after he has sated his need
taken his fill
clawed at my soul
torn into my body like a starving wolf without a pack
after all is forgotten except for pain, blood falling slowly in the rain of tears, no longer ruled by fears, and what was far becomes once again near.
When once again all that we know to be true is us
in love and surrender to the tender brutality of his control.

Life isn't about bleeding, it's about what we bleed for.
It's not about the freezing cold in your bones, it's about taking one more step into the snow and surrendering to the storm.
It's about love that makes us real
pain that makes us feel
about dying after truly living.

Maybe it was his belief that the boy's love made him real which made that silly little velveteen rabbit real. Maybe it really was the boy's love which made him real.
In the end, does it actually matter? After all, that silly tattered little velveteen rabbit was real in his own story.