An Invitation To Dreamland

3/23/22

How many days have I lost to my mind?
My hibernations into daydreams and the quiet, cold grasp of slumber deprive me of life, however trivial and meaningless is that which I lead.

My college life leaves shallow impressions on my skin. The goggle marks on my forehead, the rock-bench prints on my swollen thighs. The permanent dark circles under my eyes, the holes in my chest that regenerate in a day's time. They are all the same.

And how awful it is for my skin to crawl with the insatiable need to be anywhere else but here, and yet still have nowhere else to go.

Reading the ladies' classics fills me with an antiquated longing for bigger and brighter horizons: Jane Eyre looking across the grounds of Lowood in search for a glimpse of life beyond the crags; Esther Greenwood feeling so small and dreadful in the role she has been cast to fill; Elizabeth Bennett's stark defiance of and then inescapable submission into the standards of an oppressive and expectant society. Perhaps I will follow the footsteps of Edna Pontellier and submit to the waves of Grand Isle, let the salt water creep into my lungs. Maybe I will not feel so empty with the entire ocean inside me.

All I feel, all I have ever felt, is tragedy.