Truth, Brandon Amico

When Descartes said
“I think, therefore I am”
he discovered a key to human consciousness.
The wise man he was, he then dropped that key

into a bottle labeled “Drink Me.”
Alice came upon the bottle one day
and in the wonder of childlike innocence
found no problem with doing just that.
She realized soon after
that “real” is what you make of it
and, being the imaginative girl that she was,

she dreamed up a world that stretched infinitely
in the four cardinal directions
but sadly lacked depth
enough for the other two. This didn’t bother the inhabitants
at all, because they had no idea
they were trapped in two dimensions
when there really could be three, so
they were content in their flat land until
one little square
was visited by one great sphere,
who lifted the square,
two dimensional though he was,

higher and higher
into a dimension heretofore unknown
where he could actually gaze
down upon the world he knew,
all at once
the great, flat plains of existence
lay naked before him
and on the first real horizon he ever saw
was the silhouette of a marvelous city, just poking above its wall,
such a remarkable emerald green
that the people who lived there had to wear goggles
to avoid going blind –
at least, that’s what they were told.
The truth is,
and this is the only truth,

there is a young woman wearing silver slippers
making her way down a road
of yellow brick,
and I hope she makes it to that city
because, the brave girl she is,

she is the one who knows
that Kansas is Kansas is Kansas is
Kansas, except
when it isn’t.