I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.

(Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar)

I shut my eyes and I am deeper into the marsh the mud the dirt. Magnetic. Heavy as a blackhole. Sucking me in in its invisible web. My mind bends time. Only mine. The world revolves in the same abhorrent disaster-bent, monotonous rhythm. But we move away from the sun the sun. I am back where I’ve started. Foreign perfect red tiles and meet organized streets make me feel like a mistake on legs. I must return these eyes critical. Belongs to a bitter judge, ruthless and loveless. I almost forgot I had a heart. It feels criminal being in a city so unforgiving of flaws. I wish I was computer-generated. Robotic and devoid of emotions so the silence of the void inside me wouldn’t bother me as much as the artificial perfection standing under the colonial sun, always shining, a sun that does not let the moon breathe. Breathe never under the curtain of darkness, but a powdery amorphous shape fixated on being seen, begging for a scene. A sun that gives life but also a sun that is all-seeing, unforgiving.

I shut my eyes and I am deeper into the dark void my mind’s eye set up for me. My mind’s eye, not my body’s eyes sees all the darkness, all the obstacles and the negativities my heart is blind to. I lift my eyelids and all possibilities are born again. I am in a better condition, where I can touch clouds, mistake them for a piece of heaven. I thank my insanity for keeping me sane in an insane world. I’m glad I can build worlds out of thin air with mere words.

I shut my eyes. Only to find no way out of the mind. All of my thoughts are foreign, labeled, borrowed, painfully unoriginal. I am horrifyingly limited. I am stuck in a time-bomb in the shape of a body. All beliefs hauntingly, terrifyingly foreign once I lay my eyes on them. Eyes shut wide, mind wide open. Brewed within the pot of silence timeless. I hear each word uttered, screamed, cried out loud. Each dying actor say their lines for the last time before they fade into the darkness, their faces dimly lit within the audience. They are one of us now. Watching the mute, the loudest silence, like the pianist playing the song of silence, his fingers fingers and the keys a thousand miles apart. I don’t realize if they are committing suicide or I’m their murderer. I love disappointing pre-conditioned minds, minds pre-programmed to mediocrity, to clichés, to normalcy. Happy to disturb all of these my borrowed thoughts, kill all the actors loud unapologetic, prejudiced, delivering loud monologues without my permission. I’m glad I get to kill you but you resurrect and I get to kill you, become a better murderer. Again. My lovely daily ritual.

I shut my eyes as my thoughts and anxieties become louder. How thrilling and terrifying it is. The world reappears louder, grander, more grotesque instead of dropping dead. I am terribly disappointed. I wish to escape this noise so dark and big I feel my head just got bigger than Saturn. The rings around appearing still but I’m dizzy as a spinning disco ball softly blinding all eyes on me. I find myself in the deepest marsh— a product of joint-collaboration with all the other fearful, anxious members of the world. How I wish I could inject some madness in healthy doses to all non-dreamers. I am tired of carrying all these grand dreams by myself. It is not enough for me to give in to my healthy fantasies when spiraling eyes darted by norms and convention try to blind me to the worlds I build with my eyes wide shut. I feel abandoned, high and dry in my preferred, sane darkness.

I shut my icy eyes, tears in icicles.

I shut my eyes. Finding my body down there, attacked by the storming demons from my self-conscious, flying, bickering like ants parading on my back. Not in touch with my stream of consciousness, I try and arrange them as they arrive, so they are raw and ugly and messy. Brushed under the carpet, yet still mountainous. Tied with a ribbon pretentious. I have trouble embracing my flaws as they appear monstrous, with claws bigger than the worlds I’ve built. I shut my eyes and the darkness is larger than life.