I dream I am an ant trapped in a human body: My arms feel too long, and the bipedal mechanism eludes me. I search for my colony, yet I cannot figure out how to navigate in a finite world; I constantly bump into objects, and there are far too many imaginary barriers. I am useless in this incomprehensible body—imprisoned in my humanness.
It is still daylight, but Mom is already preparing dinner. In the meanwhile, I play the violin, muffling the clamor and occasional bombardment coming from outside. For a moment I can pretend to be human again.
There are days when the anguish consumes me, others when the sadness traps me, today is a day of feeling nothing. Perhaps it is better this way—easier to accept that I can’t do anything; being powerless is not a burden when seen as a simple fact. I wonder if emotion has so corrupted my soul that I have been left without it. Mom still has it: I showed her I managed to remove the black grime from our clothes, and she nearly cried from the shock of seeing the cotton’s whiteness restored. I see us in the clothes, fearing that unlike the fabric, our stains are permanent.
After dinner, we go to bed, even though we know it will be impossible to sleep with the noise of drones circling. The two of us press together as much as we can—rather than fearing death, I fear it will reach us separately.
It is well after dark, the anguish over an indefinable what torments me; insomnia has decided to stay. I grab my phone to turn my brain off, but it only furthers desolation: crisis, inequality, and accounts of despair fill my feed— chaos like any other influencer, exposes its richness.
I no longer feel a thing. Perhaps it is better this way: endless lament without a resolution serves no purpose— but what is the solution? I long so desperately to do something that I end up doing nothing. Chaos lives—it grows into its boundless size, and I am, but an ant beside it. I am tempted to argue that its ferocity is matched if considered I am one in a colony of billions, yet this is too cheap of a hope to conclude my aimless thoughts when I remain a single unit.
Nevertheless, despite the powerlessness— despite the feeling of patching the shells of a broken egg, despite that when the world falls apart, the only thing I seem able to do is write a pseudo-story- I have a voice. Even if I am the only listener, the echo will be preferable to the silence.
