Yasmine Modaresi (she/her) // News Editor
I saw my reflection looking back at me, disappointed.
Reflection me, silver she behind the glass me was the actualized me, the ideal me, the best of me— a figment of dream me.
Myself beside the silver glass she– mad me, hysterical me, insane me, was not she.
My ways preserved, unquivering and chronic frazzled chaos— ugly.
Her, a tranquil, composed, sane beauty.
Madness is the lover of genius— the muse of creativity.
But admiration for such turbulence falters when the exotic mania of madness is a black cloak,
shrouding the persona of depravity within.
Yet I press my hand to hers,
Clammy warm, flesh brushed against inanimate cold,
Blatantly divided yet unified, a yin and yang of bliss and suffering.
Me, the hollow-eyed shell of life despite a rhythmically beating heart of lifeforce stamina,
Her, vibrant as a deity of fertility on spring solstice, yet only a hallucination of livelihood.
Does she pity me?
Surely, for she is the me that I could never achieve.
The figment of a dream me gazes unquiveringly at me— me, unactualized me— drinking me, detesting me, pitying me,
Gaze radiant as a throbbing star,
Near in proximity but separated, off light years away.
Me, a wandering ember, lost in a smoke cloaked labyrinth,
Ash clinging to my mortal skin like a mocking prophecy.
Hand pressed hard atop shattering glass,
If I stepped through, would I kill the despised me? The real me? Become the dream me?
The Oroborus devours and destroys itself, a sacrifice and a renaissance,
Resurrected anew only through ritualistic suicide.