After a long day of studying and debating with classmates and colleagues, I melted into the mattress of my bed. I then stretch my arm out to the nightstand and retrieve the book I’ve fallen asleep to the night before.

Opening the book, I found my place then paused. Finales where coming up and there were still things I needed to brush up on. I looked up to my desk filled with pages and pages of notes, textbooks, and pens. “Surely I’ve studied enough,” I thought to myself, “there’s still tomorrow and the day after…” I was tired of politics and the real world; my mind needed to be elsewhere.

Looking back down at my book, the world around me slowly disappeared. Word by word, all my thoughts and worries where replaced by those of the book in my hands. In place of finales, I worried about the safety of the characters. Instead of politics, I learned magic. And rather than living in a world of noise, pollution, and racism; floral sents swirled around me along with the buzzing of bugs and calls of animals.

It was a world not like ours. One to get consumed by. A paradise that could last for as long as you choose.