Imaginary Her

Saw her picture Tuesday night.

By Wednesday we had chemistry.

By Thursday, apparently,

we'd been together three years inside my fucking head.

I knew her favorite restaurant.

She never told me.

Knew exactly how she'd laugh at my jokes.

Hadn't heard her laugh yet.

Already knew she'd love my music.

This woman had never heard one fucking song.

Calm down.

We exchanged twelve messages.

TWELVE.

Somehow my imagination

bought us property. SHE LOOKED BETTER IN MY IMAGINATION!

THAT'S PROBABLY MY FUCKING FAULT!

I gave her jokes,

dreams, favorite songs—

hell, I gave the woman a dog!

SHE LOOKED BETTER IN MY IMAGINATION!

Reality never had a chance at all.

She showed up being perfectly normal— And I thought,

“Huh.” That's on me.

Then we actually went to dinner.

She was pretty. She was funny.

She was nice.

Absolute disaster. Because imaginary her had apparently won six Grammys,

spoke four languages, understood every weird thought I had and never once

asked what I meant.

Real her looks across the table:

“What?” Exactly.

She says she hates olives.

My imaginary girlfriend fucking loved olives.

Wait— Why did I give her an opinion about olives?

Good question. SHE LOOKED BETTER IN MY IMAGINATION!

THAT'S DEFINITELY MY FUCKING FAULT!

She never promised perfection— I just filled in everything I didn't know!

SHE LOOKED BETTER IN MY IMAGINATION!

Turns out humans come with lives of their own.

Who could've possibly predicted a woman I invented wasn't the woman on

my phone?

And then something weird happened.

Halfway through dinner I stopped comparing her to somebody who didn't exist.

She told this completely stupid story.

I laughed way too hard.

And for the first time all week— I actually met her.

Oh.

There you are.

SHE LOOKED BETTER IN MY IMAGINATION!

BUT IMAGINATION CHEATS LIKE HELL!

It writes every answer before the question,

then gets mad when reality tells— A DIFFERENT STORY!

And maybe different ain't that bad.

I spent a week inventing perfection— Turns out I liked the woman

better than the character I had.

She looks at me:

“So…

you wanna do this again?”

“Yeah.”

“But I need to completely rewrite your opinion about olives.”