Contelysia

"Hold my hand," I say, looking straight into her deep, hazel eyes. "What?" she asks me, chuckling and averting her gaze. "I need to know you are real." She grasps my hand firmly, entwining our fingers. The warmth of her hand comforts my cold, sweaty hand. "See?" she nods her head at me, her eyes trained at our conjoined hands. "I am real: you found a friend." Tears well in my eyes as I look downwards to my lap, my grip on her hand tightening. "Why...?" I trail off, a limpid drop falling on my blue jeans, darkening the fabric there. My teeth suck and bite on my lower lip, my brain swirling and swirling into the darkness of being alone. A sudden squeeze on my hand brings me back from my thoughts. "'Why', what?" she asks me, her tone gentle, unlike anything I ever experienced. So...insightful, making it seem like she knew every nook of my person, every emotion I feel, every thought that scuttles into my brain. ...

Chasing butterflies through the emerald fields, Peeking through branches to gaze at the azure sky. Clouds scudding across as wind rattles and rustles, And I spread my arms, welcoming the air as it envelopes me. I close my eyes and feel the warmth of the sun on my speckled skin, My sagacious thoughts flowing away and vaporizing. Becoming a child again is so winsome, Yet, the world beneath my feet ostracises me. The onus that upends me  refuses to elude my being, Yet, the unwithering ecstasy of the words That imprint on my soul and whisk me away refuses to find another heart to torment. Perhaps, seeing the world through the eyes of innocence Will not stagger me into fantasy, But impel me to a reality where askew perception finally deciphers into clarity. And in that world, Let me find a place where my thoughts; Sagacious or foolish, poetic or callous; Morph into acceptance, And finding joy in the most insignificant of events, Waxes a victory.

The portal stretches from the ground to the sky, and the world beyond seems to mimic every character my world has. I have come a long way - from swimming through the waters, scaling the hills, and trailing the deserts - and now, I can't give up. I'll fight through, and reach my destination. I run across the stony path to the gateway, the cobblestones digging into my bare feet as the thumping of my quick feet matches the pounding of my heart. Chilly air blows across my face as blood rushes to my nose, making me breathe erratically. I can feel my limbs stress and stretch in agony as I increase my speed, the portal seeming to go farther and farther as I run. I feel like Dorothy on the yellow brick road, reaching for my dreams and trying to escape a world where I never belonged. I need to go somewhere else. Anywhere else. The gateway finally comes in front of me, but my heart drops when I look into it. A soldier to stop me. A protector to guard her world. I stretch my hands as she ...

The familiar stench of cheap perfume, perspiration, and old concrete invades my nose. The metro in Paris is something I have an acquired taste of. The open windows give way to cool air, my extraordinary height giving me an advantage by relieving the olfactory overload I bore. But the people, crashing into me from every unimaginable direction, and the suffocation lessens my love for this underground train.  Yes, that's what I said, an acquired taste. I have been here for ten months now. With admission into a university here, I have become familiar with Paris and its people. The metro is a constant in my Parisian life. It remains there to carry me to my destination, no matter how mad I get when there are more than five people around me, or how happy I get when my favorite songs help me escape from everything that bothers me, and the steady beat of the metro moving on the old track reverberates through every cell of my body. I am so ready to get my day over with. It was a good day at ...

 Shhhhh! Do you hear that? That's the silence that I seek. The silence that I get when I leave my home, The silence that holds me back from being weak. The silence that in the darkness shone. The silence that coaxes me to believe in death, The peace it brings, The commotion that ceases, the quiet. The eternal silence sings, Sings me to sleep that envelopes me. Sings me to 'everlasting' joy. A joy that will not necessarily be. Shhhhh! Do you hear that? It's the silence I want. The dark I need to last, The empty void that envelopes me. A silence so crass, It scars my being, Strips me of my enlightening will, Extinguishes it to plunge me into darkness. Shhhhh! Do you hear that? Nothing, I hear nothing anymore. A shadow consumes me, and the night is all I know.

 I sit in a room, with a roof of the night A night sky with no stars, just the ever-consuming dark. The room encloses me in grey walls, Walls that seem to close in on me, with a floor so white, White that shocks me into a stupor. Joy lingers outside the doorless room, Fury laps like flames on the cement. Despair tends to seep its way in sometimes, But sorrow waits outside, like an old friend. I trace the white floor with my fingers, Along the ridges looking for a sprout of grass, To believe in feeling again. To believe in enjoying with ardor. To believe in being furious with fervor. But the sprout of grass is non-existent, And the despair seeps in again. Nevertheless, I felt something, even if it brings me to despair.                                       ---~   })!({ ~--- I sit in a room, with a roof of the night A night sky with no stars, just the ever-consuming...

  "It's funny how you get through every day without looking behind your back to see if the world you just walked past is still the same. It's funnier that we know that soon it won't be the same, and we are doing absolutely nothing to prevent it. I mean, imagine, what if the dinosaurs knew that a meteorite was going to wipe them off, and they did nothing about it? I'm pretty sure that we would use dinosaurs as a metaphor for idiocy. So I did what I do best. I programmed. I programmed a virtual world to put people in after the first eighteen years of their life, to forward them to the most probable future. A dark, grey world, covered with a lead sky and an impermeable ground. A world where every corner has death . Gruesome, I know. But that is what the world will be like, people. It will be like that if humans continue to live as carelessly as we are living right now. Now some may call me a tyrannous queen, but a queen, nonetheless. How could I subject people to me...