The drip drip drip of the Nespresso machine keeps me company.
I watch the brown pool rise and rise, filling my cup.
I take a sip, flinch unconsciously. It is bitter and scalding.
The cool foam coats my top lip.
No one is awake. It is 4am. I shouldn’t be awake.
Still, I am.
I will be nineteen in nineteen days.

This is not how I imagined my nineteenth; though my birthdays never really go the way I expect.
This is not how I imagined this month, this year.
There are worse things than being homebound; there are also better things.
I am trying to reconcile the existence of the two.

I am lucky enough to be (almost) nineteen.
To be safe
To be healthy
To have a home
To have a stable family income

I am unlucky enough to be (almost) nineteen.
To be mentally ill
To be isolated
To feel useless
To have a family spread thin

The two can coexist. I am lucky (and unlucky) enough to see this.

In nineteen days, I will be nineteen. Few people will know unless I tell them. There are bigger things to consider in the world. There are smaller ones too. I lie somewhere amid it all. I am just a girl— a faceless, healthy girl— amid a world of strife. The sun will rise, I will turn nineteen, and it will set; I doubt I will feel any different. The world will keep turning, with or without me. I am lucky (and unlucky) enough to recognize this.
Quarantine has provided me a bit too much time for introspection, I think.

My coffee is finished. The brown drops on the cup’s bottom resemble a smile. I am lucky enough to notice this.

~ ~~
Keys tipping
Under my fingers
Notes resounding
Around me
Playing,
Laying
Layer over layer
Of tones
Emitting
And drawing forth
The sighs that
Do not escape my mouth
And instead trace back
Down my tensed throat
Along my collar bones
Arms
Twisting around my wrists
And zipping at my finger tips.
My mind knows
And so my fingers follow.

And yet my mind also knows
It's searching.
Not for something missing
But
For something that could be there.
And yet it continues to progress,
Fingers relaying,
Notes sounding,
Fading.
Continuously

~~ ~

In the distance
And yet
Flowing through every medium
Surrounding me,
A voice flows alongside
These notes,
These feelings.
A voice that enriches
And pairs with the notes
That continue
To resound around me

I am a person of contradiction.

I love and hate. I open and close. I move and halt. I laugh and cry. Both at the same time.

I am the epitome of utter imperfection.

I happy and not happy about it.

There is duality in everything that I do — dark and light. It's never black or white. It's never gray. It's both at the same time.

There is a place high
Up, up above
In the vast blue sky
Yet deep, deep within
The cavern of my being

Silence, light and smiles
Dance together
Nothing happens
Just Is

In giving
Is expansiveness
Truth within

In fear
Is contraction
The mind world
Of desire
Control
And illusion

Let all fade
In the blue ocean
Of silent love

In desolate places, I leave all my faces.
The masks and disguises, construction of lies.
The spotlight of fear, my delight and dimise.

As curtains close, applause fades,
alone with the shadows of self that pervades.
Ghosts of the past, that once were true.
Withered and lost, in my daily debut.
To please and to pleasure, a pointless measure.
Unable to escape, I'm asleep but awake.

I wriggle and writh in my own divide,
tearing apart from depths deep inside.
Empty halls and vacant seats,
angels and demons fatefully meet.

Crimson flows as roses fall,
the closing act as curtains call.
My death is rebirth, the dove and the crow,
a final bow at the end of my show.