Residence
Despite the vastness of the human psyche, the mind is a pitiful small cell.
There's little space to hold more than a few people at a time.
Your mind is crowded, I force my way through dozens of faces and names; their nails, like claws, dig into me leaving harsh questions indented into my skin.
You haven't the time for all of us, so you pick and choose.
Your train of thought acts like a claw machine in which you strive to collect the most ideal prize.
The claw hovers over me for a moment, I think, or maybe I imagined it.
There's no time for debate though as it slides towards your current obsession.
The questions carved into my skin unravel and strangle me, I feel light, I feel gone.
Your mind is a cramped cell, lacking the space and freedom I require.
It's time to leave, I think.
I go far away, I search for fields, for windows, for a gentle breeze.
I think a silent goodbye as we part.
My mind loses a resident as does yours.
Residence is about one-sided infatuation and constantly thinking about someone who doesn't think of you. I'd written this piece as a sort of vent and message to myself that it's time to get over them and that their mind isn't a very good fit for me anyway. I often struggle getting over the idea of people and the feelings I hold for them, as I'm worried I won't find something like that again. It's a very silly and adolescent way of looking at things, but as a silly adolescent, I try not to beat myself up too hard on it.I chose to depict the train of thought as a claw machine as I feel it best describes the way I think. You sort of coach yourself to think about something, in this case, the "prize," but it doesn't always come out as planned and you often miss the point. The person I wrote this about is very similar to me and I felt that their train of thought would also best depicted that way. For the visual, I kept it unrefined as emotive, using flowers to depict a sort of "they love me, they love me not," feeling.
18, Melbourne, Australia