Pretend

As I lay on my mat on the bedroom floor that I like to call my bed, absorbing the humidity of the warm spring day, I think to myself...

If I just close my eyes, those construction workers outside my window, calling to each other as they work, with the cars and buses that pass by on the street below, could easily pass as the sounds I heard every day in Taipei.

If I just close my eyes, this humidity would feel just like it does on an early spring morning in Taiwan.

If I just close my eyes, this bed of mine would almost pass as those hard straw mattresses that Melinda had to put extra blankets down so she could endure them.

If I just close my eyes, I could just pretend I was there, in Taiwan, sleeping in on a lazy morning.

I close my eyes.

When my roommate walks in a few minutes later, thinking that I had left for the day and left my light on in my bedroom, I have traveled around the world and back.

I get up off my bed and listen to the sounds of Charlottesville, feel the spring of Virginia.  I am glad that my imagination has allowed me to satiate a little of my homesickness.