There's a man in my backyard.
He's always there looking from afar, contemplating in silence, the way you see a painting or puzzle. Contemplating with a single post lamp to keep him company. How lonely he must be now that the birds have gone to sleep. His eyes, I never see but they must be red, never blinking. He stands still until the wind takes pity, dancing with him, waltzing across the plain grass. He waits for me to come home every day without saying a word, playing with birds. He becomes a friendly scarecrow, terrible at his job. I keep my curtains up to see him better, even at night, that way neither of us will ever be alone. I talk to him and he'll move his head as if saying something back. Whenever he smiles it means he's happy, unless he isn't. He never moves from his usual spot on that patch of grass, so during the day I go to him. I'm sure it makes him happy. He never talks, just stares, and I do the same.
His feet are sown into the ground and my eyes to the dandelions at his feet. They adorn his feet like gold jewelry and expensive wishes, yet he picks them out for me, a bouquet of dandelions. I put them in water, making sure they stay golden. Like the sun that burns him like fire, the dandelions stood out like a sun amidst my empty kitchen.
There's a man in my backyard. He's nicer than he seems, no need for fear.
During the day, he's green with roots as feet, and at night he has a thousand faces. He can become Abraham Lincoln or a horrible monster with a great beard. Coming to life, he tortures night with silence. The moon becomes his crown, and I, his jester. Yesterday he wore the face of a pirate, and the day before that, the face of a kind man. The horrible things he can become, but oh the beauty he can portray. Never becoming a still statue, never becoming a boring canvas. I never thought his many faces could scare me until I started to have nightmares of the faces he could become. I tried to tell people about the man in my backyard. They say I have a vivid imagination. If only my vivid imagination could solve all the problems in the world.
It could not.
The man in my backyard, no matter how much people say he's only part of my imagination, he's every bit real to me. When he whispers secrets, I listen. When I cry, he comforts. He stares from afar as we converse, the crescent moon as our witness. One day, I woke up to see the tree gone. The man in my backyard had been carved out with all of his roots. The moon and I had never felt lonelier. Not a single dandelion was left to wish upon, my comfort becoming my fountain of sorrow. I was left with a vase of wilting dandelions.
Here stood a man with a thousand faces.
