The unreal

You meet people everyday. New people. Old people. Unreal people. With coats and coats of paint, to hold the rust without and within. Adding a layer every year. Are twenty something layers virtually impenetrable? Cynicism. Ego. Pride. Hurt. Fear. Insecurity. Why can I see the layers. Old paint. New paint. But not the metal beneath? I want to pry. It keeps sinking deeper. And I keep up the conversation. My unrealness talking to your unrealness.

It tires me. And I go back to them, whom I knew before. The paints' still there, but there is the shared knowledge, of having seen the naked beam once. The talk is still unreal. But you borrow the reality from a distant past. And continue chipping away at the coats, slowly, hoping you can chip away one before a new one comes up.

And I seek the girders of steel. Immune to rust and unafraid of the blemishes. But to see that maybe you must be that.