rabbit holes

it begins
with an opera mask formed in binary code
i slip it on and am a
p h a n t o m
a master of a world i am
divine
and as my creations reach out to me i reach
back and the mask shifts
i am tantalus
my rapture within reach
a runaway train with no option but to wreck
itself; i scrape the edges of the number one
i rest in the pockets of zeros
and i am not alone

it begins
at night which
bleeds into day which
soaks the world in the imaginary
i am alice however
i. am. not. asleep.
i have clawed my way to tuesday
back out of the rabbit hole for a
breath of fresh air
but instead it tastes like unpleasant conversations and
air travel so i let myself
tumble back down

it begins
as staring out windows in kindergarten and
finishing books in a day
countless notebooks that will never run out of pages
i have dug myself trenches with only my pen and
will continue to defend those
linear, binary little worlds until my last
breath
because when life is war,
at least i’ll have my words

Siskind (she/her they/them) is a member of the class of 2022 at Annapolis High School in Annapolis, Maryland. She is in the Performing Visual Arts magnet program at her school for creative writing and is the president and founder of the Literature club. She loves languages and one day hopes to be fluent in at least one language from popular language families in order to translate her own work. Siskind enjoys binge watching TV shows and editing images in her free time.

Image: Font Awesome Free 5.2.0 by @fontawesome – https://fontawesome.com, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons