Featured in the 2014 Fall Issue of Rambunctious
The Opiate of Dreams Colin Howe, '16 Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling Its purity corrupted by intensifying darkness Inescapable as it spreads Dying embers scattered above the hills Dispersing until only the dim stars remain Every seam, every crack, draped with shadows Black cobwebs spread by some unseen effervescent spider, working with surgical precision. You feel a subtle aura of finality At the periphery of your conscious You fight it, think of anything else Desperately searching for a comfortable thought To reach out, as a child swinging in a tree would grabbing for the next trunk Only to find your hands don't quite reach And so, as always, it returns You feel its cold tendrils of nothingness Cling to your soul, and contort it Wring it of the joyful ignorance of time Until eventually you fall into the sweet, numbing caress of dreams, the true opiate of the masses