Aetherias Moon

By Aetherias Moon

A dissociative poem about my inner world

I live in a dream. Floaty, ethereal, diaphanous. I touch the world, but my fingers slip through it. I’m a spirit drifting along the ground. I bump into people and smile; they smile back, enjoying my haunting. Your reality is my dreamspace. My breath spreads through me like wind caught in a sail. I float away until I’m out of myself, my fingers moving on marionette strings I flick from above.

I’m lost.

It’s beautiful.

It’s sad.

I fall inside of myself. There’s a vibrant meadow stretching into a clear horizon. A cottage sits by the beach, the grass fading into. I stand around with my friends and family, the internal ones, the ones nobody can see but me. The ones who haunt my body. We laugh and play. Even the anxious ones love the meadow. It’s our home.

Then the rift shifts into view. Where the meadow cracks open, revealing black jagged rocks and an abyss that goes into infinity. “That’s where I keep the secrets, shh.” 

We don’t go in there.

Ignore it.

Please?

Let’s go back to the meadow filled with blue roses and hydrangea bushes, forming a little maze. Children play around, but we won’t speak of those. They’re protected, safe, off limits. Elira watches them, their white hair shimmering in the sunlight, a robe draping across their slender form. Elira calls after the children and makes sure they are okay. I watch from a distance, my form blurry and glitching.

Who am I?

I sink into the water, staring up at a dark sky. The meadow has vanished and I’m warm and lost in the sea. The darkness coats me, comforts me. I can’t see myself and that’s okay. I don’t need a name. I don’t need to look like anything.

I can just be.

“Look at me,” a voice says. “Help me.”

I turn away from the voice, but it gets more incessant. The begging louder. I shiver as the water begins to freeze. I want to go back to the meadow.

It’s broken though.

We rebuild it, but it’s not the same. Not since the rift formed. Its birth, like a prophecy that a reckoning will come.

“You have to look at me one day.” 

I blink and count the colors of the room. Red: the case of Kung-Fu Panda. Orange: the bowl that held my farina from yesterday. Yellow: a french fry forgotten on a table. Green: A mug slightly stained with coffee. Blue: My planner that I don’t know how to use. Indigo: the game cube controller by the television. Violet: my dragon notebook.

I am home. I have forgotten that place. I reach out for a lighter and flash a candle to life. It flickers and spits out ash, but I enjoy the scent of roses it wafts to me.

That’s what my meadow would smell like, if it were real, if I could actually go there. If my reality didn’t meld with a dreamspace. If life didn’t become unreal. If I were solid.

If I didn’t have a fractured soul.

If I was beautiful like you.

Buy Me a Coffee

This poem is an exploration of my inner world. A place in your mind where you see spaces that are representative of your emotion. With my Dissociative Identity Disorder I use it to connect with my parts.

If you liked this post considering reading about my Dissociative Identity Disorder or my set of diary entries from my system.

If you’re looking for short stories consider reading my magical realism queer romance or my story about exploring dissociative identity disorder.