Try not to stare
Try not to stare
Try not to stare

This is the group meeting chorus being sung in my head by baby dragons playing fiddles made of cherry blossom branches. They’re the cutest thing I’ve ever seen and they make it so easy not to stare at the speaker as if I think they’re holding the secrets of life hostage in their eye sockets. The real challenge becomes not swaying to their well choreographed song.

I make myself busy writing a random assortment of unrelated phrases that if read by anyone might land me in a psychiatric hospital. Each phrase is related to the speaker’s tone until it makes a wave of sorts and arrives at an island, a garden or maybe even a comma. Anything to represent where the water is headed. The words themselves don’t matter, only the pictures that can be drawn with them, and ultimately, how everyone in the room seems to feel once arriving at the place imagined.

I look up once the picture is clear and I think of a question to ask, something that includes the color green because on some level everyone appreciates growth, even when it’s not their own.

The answer almost always feels like a stock photo. True art is unmistakable so when you hear it, you feel on your skin a paintbrush that best aligns with the unheard symphony.