Celina Bagchi '24
if eyes are the windows to the soul, mine must have closed long ago, because i don’t think i have one anymore. don’t be so dramatic, you tell me, but it’s not drama, can’t you see? i built the cage around my heart; it’s made of my own bones, brittle and flat. what do you know about dreaming? i ask.
dreams are stories created by the dark recesses of my mind when the real world has grown too tiring. dreams are visions that haunt me every time my eyelids close. dreams are memories from the shrine you built behind my eyes.
what do you know about dreaming?
my dreams come in sharp slaps of pain that lash across my skin and leave angry red marks, angrier than your eyes when i left. my dreams come like good men, a figment of my fickle mind’s creation. my dreams come in flashes of moonlight and despairing flames of love that sputter out. in my dreams, i am like you.
what do you know about dying?
dying is just falling in love with the wrong person--with the idea of a person who does not exist. dying is wild honey and eternal summers and bliss cities fading to nothingness. dying is losing pieces of your soul to someone you did not choose to give it to. when i die, i will die like you.
what do you know about love?
love is the sweetest con, the grandest lie, the greatest myth mankind ever crafted. love is dying a slow death, freezing, forgetting my name, toppling from the throne in my head. love is winning the battle but losing the war. the only one i have ever loved is you.
what do you know about me?
i am nothing but an idea, a fallacy, a question mark. i am a fighting cog in the machine. i am god’s puppet on a lonely string. i am something that matters only in the context of you.
what do you really know about me?
i exist, i cry, after years of you telling me i am less than a memory. i exist i exist i exist. i am nobody and i am every version of myself that has ever been. i am me, even when there is no you.
my bones are breaking with every new vision that waltzes across my mind’s eye, and yet, i wouldn’t change it. i wouldn’t trade the pain of falling from new heights for all the dreams of you in the world.
what do you know about dreaming? i hear you ask.
i no longer dream, i tell you. the shrine beneath my eyelids is gone.