my ceiling isn’t very interesting
considering the amount of time
I spend staring at it
hours upon hours
tracing constellations
hoping to make some sense
of the bumps and fissures splattered up there
maybe I should paint something on that blank canvas
to keep my mind from wandering
maybe hang up a rotating solar system
to dangle in front of my face
so I can feel like a child again
but that would require getting out of bed
and I can’t do that
the sun is still asleep
I should be too
but my mornings consist of a vast nothingness
an unfortunate reflection of the rest of my day
so here I lie
staring
at the door
out the window
telling myself everything’s fine
at the clock
back to the ceiling
eyes shifting everywhere
except
there
on the other side of this immense cosmic ocean
is a desolate vessel
I blink
and I can see the captain
she has my mouth
but not the swollen bloody flesh from the obsessive chewing
she has my eyes
but not the deep violet canyons beneath them
I blink
and she’s gone
and the spaceship
is just
a plain
old
desk
with books sprawled about
in stacks of stories
with note-scribbled margins
and some spines still uncracked
eight-year-old me would be overjoyed
eighteen-year-old me is just overwhelmed
I feel like cervantes’ naive knight
and eliot’s etherized patient
and flaubert’s self-destructive damsel-in-distress
I guess I just don’t feel like myself
half-drunk coffee cups
splayed about
giggling to each other
laughing at me
because I don’t understand
any of my readings
because I have three papers due next week
and I can’t summon the will to write any of them
plates of food I can’t stomach
I can’t be bothered to eat
because it’ll be regurgitated anyways
so I’ll try to regurgitate information instead
from the dense journal articles I can’t seem to swallow or digest
I can see it all
the coffee cups
the plates
the thoughts
the feelings
I can see it all the way from here
so far away
five feet away
five feet too far
it’s far too easy to just stay here
let my mind wander where my feet won’t take me
busy my brain with the galaxy on the ceiling
maybe I should hang up a rotating solar system
but that would require getting out of bed
and I can’t do that
Illustration by Amy Jiao
