dreamland

twenty-three

I had taken two sleeping pills the following night and even though I closed my eyelids and the world went black when my head hit the pillow, it wasn't nice.

I dreamed as I always did.
But this was a dream that made me feel strange and out of sync with the world in front of me. My life had now become like a ton of balls of yarn tangled and intertwined. And even though each worry, held its own distinct color, I still couldn't find a way to unwrap them.

In my dream, I was touching my hair.
I was running my fingers through my hair, caressing it. I felt the thickness of my hair and the thinness of it at the ends that needed trimming. But I did more than just trim an inch off like my mother did every three and a half months.

I cut off a small inch at first and gasped before cutting a thicker chunk. I kept slashing the black scissors at my hair until my hair hung at my shoulder blades and not at my elbows.

I looked like myself still, it was just one feature that was changed.
Even so, my hair would grow again and I would look the same but by the time it had I would feel like I looked different but the same at once.

Then I started to dye it black, raven black, the inside of a black hole black, so black that it looked like if I was ready for a funeral.
I kept dying until the brown in my hair was no more. The brown disappeared and was swallowed by the black as I smeared glob after glob onto my scalp and onto my ends.
Then just as strangely and abruptly as I dyed my hair, I stopped because I was satisfied with what I saw in the mirror.
It was the end result I had been seeking.
But then I realized that not completely, a small detail was missing.
I rubbed red lipstick on my lips softly and patiently at first, like if I was getting ready for some place where I was supposed to look nice. All at once I suddenly became angry and rubbed it in harder.
I rubbed so hard until then my lips weren't red with lipstick but with blood.
There was blood, blood that could have only seeped out of my skin, in dreams, because this is the way dreamland functioned.
It was hyperbolized.

The blood ran down my lips and down my neck and onto my dark dress. The blood flowed and flowed and it seemed impossible that so much blood could have ever been inside me. It seemed impossible that my body could ever function normally without it.

And then the blood ceased to flow too.
It was like someone turned the handle and shut it off.

I smiled at my reflection briefly.

Then I and hit the mirror continuously until it cracked underneath my fist and open palm. The strangest things seemed to satisfy me.

I applied more red lipstick to my lips, looking into my cracked reflection in the bathroom mirror.

I kept rubbing layer atop layer and slowly the lipstick grew shorter and shorter.

And then I did the strangest thing I've ever done, it was the strangest thing, even for a dream. I started to speak; saying things I've never said before. Using phrases and words and slurs that I hadn't used before because they just weren't how I spoke. I said hello and I said goodbye and I said your name. I kept repeating your name but simply never came up satisfied. I wasn't satisfied with the way my voice sounded.
I don't know why.
I said your name louder this time, persistently, like if I was scolding at the image in the mirror. I kept saying your name and then I begin to understand why I kept repeating it.
Now my voice didn't even satisfy me.
All the things about me didn't satisfy me because I didn't like me in the mirror or in the dream.

I screamed your name and it still didn't satisfy my ears. I screamed it and then I stop screaming. I said to the mirror; she doesn't get angry like you do, so I didn't get angry anymore. I cleared my throat and I tried one more time and I sounded just like her.