John Patrick Robbins writes

Reality Check Please

Readers knew me far better than those who surrounded me.
The whores on the street always appear better from afar.

I was a mirage not a man.
A character that existed on paper behind a screen.

The kid spoke to me as if he knew me, calling me by my initials not my name.

I wanted to knock him on his ass,
but this was not the page or my world.

And he did not know the words that existed outside the man.

 

 --Sharon G Kennedy