53 | CEDARVILLE REVIEW I crave the snowflake brush of wind across my cheek as I walk down a foggy street alone, store lights casting hugs dimly into the air. I crave the tinkering warmth of tea with cream and sugar in the silence of carpet and armchairs in a room lined with floral wallpaper and aging photographs. I crave these places because it’s there that I feel real. The fairytales only ever talk of being real as a blissful dream come true. Yet as a tattered toy rabbit will tell you, there’s no one else like him, and soon, the wonder of being real threads into a linting mound of fabric loneliness, too worn to love, too soft to not wrap around something else, and too thin to not tear. I crave the footsteps of unspoken words and the fetal vulnerability of curling up under a blanket in an armchair. What feels most real eventually becomes clear to me — in a place where I have no land, my breath bestows my land. ESCAPE CHARIS CHEN
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