A bowing head to a cheering audience, awestruck with amazement as they cannot believe what they had just seen has actually happened. It must be magic, but the bowing head knew, magic is not real. Like the smile on the magician’s face after finishing her grand performance, magic is not real. She always questions why being a successful magician feels so empty. She questions this the way you would question one of the amazing tricks she performs, and much like the question of “How did she do that?”, she doesn’t really want to know. See, you don’t really want to know how the trick was done because it would ruin the “magic” and she doesn’t want to know why she feels empty doing what she loves because it might ruin her love for it. Much like what people do after seeing a good trick, she looks for the answer but she isn’t really looking. If you ever find out what the trick is, you realize what you already knew, “Magic is not real”. If she ever finds out why being a successful magician isn’t as satisfying anymore, she’ll realize what she knows deep down, “This isn’t my passion”.

She sits across her couch pondering her conflicting feelings about her career while rolling a gold dollar across her fingers. It seems to reflect her thoughts as it goes, cycling through her fingers like her mind sorts through thoughts. Every now and then, she would get stuck on a thought and she’d roll the coin back and forth rather than following through. Also like her thoughts, the coin would end up right back at the beginning., rolling to the end before sliding it between her pinky and ring finger, catching it with her thumb only to place it right back where it started, on her forefinger. She would always come to the same conclusion and she would always brush it off. She would think, “Maybe I don’t love my job?” before immediately brushing it off with “There’s no way, I’ve always loved magic”. She just can’t see that she’s right because she doesn’t realize that her job is missing a lot of what made her fall in love with magic. There were little things that she loved about magic when she first started off. These things are all still there just enough to remind her that she loves magic, which makes it easier to tell herself that she loves her job, but these things aren’t found in her performances. They are things she overlooks when she’s bored and fidgeting with her cards, coins, sponge balls, and all her little magic gimmicks and tools. Things like the feeling of the coin between her fingers as she rolls it unconsciously. The way each individual card hits the palm of her hand when she’s doing her favorite waterfall flourish. All these things that she enjoys so much but hasn’t yet realized aren’t things she gets to do on stage.

Another successful performance on stage, another audience clapping and cheering, another fake smile. Today is worse than most days for her. It’s her last performance of the night and the announcer gives her the cue to move off stage. “Another amazing performance from the Dazzling Delilah!”, he says. As she goes across backstage she sympathizes with her stagehands for a moment. “They really don’t get enough credit. They have to run around so much and really make up the whole performance.”, she sees her assistants and sympathizes with them for a moment as well. “These guys too. They need to remember where the trapdoors are and time themselves right for the tricks to work.”, she thinks. Outside, she gets in her car and has a terrible feeling deep down. She doesn’t know what this feeling is but she can tell it’s out to get her. Within seconds, she begins crying uncontrollably. Tears are racing down her cheek in streams and the light sensation of them tickling each cheek only prompts more tears to pour, joining the race. Awkward, choppy breaths going in and out of her lungs in strange quantities, one moment her lungs feel too deflated and in the next, too inflated. Her tears are giving life to her makeup and allowing it to paint its own picture on her face. She always hated that makeup, but she wears it for the show as it’s hard to be a woman in the magic industry without an excessive use of it. This makeup she hates so much is ruining her collar, only adding to the stress she is already feeling. Finally, she asks herself why she’s crying. She comes to the conclusion she has always avoided, the conclusion that she hates her job. She hates that she doesn’t get to perform any tricks anymore, it’s all done by her stagehands and assistants. All she gets to do anymore is gesture and remove a cloth every once in a while. There aren’t any tricks that allow her to utilize the skills she enjoyed using so much. She was only able to realize this now because she asked herself a different question. Before, she asked herself why she felt empty and had already denied the correct answers. If it wasn’t for this moment of weakness, she might’ve never looked so deeply into herself. In that moment, she decides that she wants to move her magic to the streets of Vegas. Being a successful magician on stage has provided her with more than enough money to retire very comfortably right where she is now. She wants to do magic as a hobby, maybe post on YouTube where she can rebrand herself. At least she could go by her real name on the internet. “Delilah Flair” sounds much better as a street name than “Dazzling Delilah” does as a stage name.

Delilah starts her car and finally heads home. Now she can sleep and get some much needed rest before quitting her job tomorrow. The alarm goes off, that dreaded noise everyone grows to hate but she isn’t as bothered by it today because she know it’s the last day she has to hear it as early as 4:50 in the morning. Shower, makeup, breakfast, keys, her usual routine. She gets to work to do her usual five performances. It’s the last performance of the day and the audience is cheering, Delilah’s head is bowing, and for the first time in four and a half years, the smile she gives onstage is genuine. The announcer gives her the cue and she rushes to the manager and quits. She’s finally free to do magic her own way, she just hopes she wasn’t too impulsive in this decision.

The year is 2022, she’s been doing street magic on YouTube for three years now and she couldn’t be happier. Everyday is exciting for her as she gets to try simpler yet more satisfying tricks that she comes up with and closely watch the reactions of the people she does them for. She missed that, performing for a person rather than an audience. This way, she feels like she’s sharing a moment with someone, a moment of wonder and amazement that she has provided and can actually observe. In an audience, it’s hard to see every face and can be exhausting to look for each of them. There’s nothing that she loves more than seeing how she made someone feel. Everytime she sees it she thinks, “Magic is not real. Feelings are real, and magic feels real enough for them so it’s real enough for me”. Unfortunately, this makes Delilah realize a new problem in her life. She doesn’t get to have many feelings, herself. She’s always providing feelings for others but she wants someone to do the same for her now. Delilah no longer feels empty, but now she feels lonely. Knowing that magic feels real for others isn’t enough for her anymore. She wants to share all of her moments with someone, not just magic with strangers. She wants to feel something as good as magic with someone else, but magic is not real.