clarke riddle, district three

"But darling, your dreams are made of dust."

She has never been supportive of me. I do not expect her to, with her pessimism and dark view of the world. Everything is shadows in her eyes, where scheming demons are obscured, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

But Mother, you see more shadows than I, perhaps because you have no light left to cast upon the blackness. Her past is unknown to me, but it must be cloaked in the darkness of death and destruction. It must be stained with rust colored flakes - old blood. Our home is content; there is not a scream of agony or of a wild childish tantrum. It is a bland place where a dreamer is tucked away under snow white sheets, pondering what lies beyond, weaving together fables of her own.

Under the warmth of the sun and the smiles of the stars, my fingertips ever so slightly brush against fantasy that will never touch down upon the grim earth. My dreams are a flickering light held up high in the darkness of the pessimism and sharp tongue of criticism that shrouds my home. Its deep roots are from the seed of my mother and her bleak ideals, her broken, twisted vision.

My endless imagination, a vast sea of jumbled blissful thoughts and futures never to be, is the only trace of childhood prominent in me. And if it is naive to hope for such impossible things and dream such wild dreams, so be it; shame does not often redden my cheeks. The mind has no barriers as the body does. I could run up a hill of cotton candy or recline in the soft haven of the clouds if I wished. But my bones remain planted here, in a dreary world that bores the childish mind I never let go of.

I dread awakening each morning to a bird's nest of blonde hair, tangled from many hours of slumber. I dread seeing an angular face in the mirror, slack with drowsiness. But in the rested features of my face, resentment for the blinding sunlight that slices through the serenity of sleep and the bliss of dreams that once engulfed me is written. And the purple shadows, shocking against fair skin, I despise the most. Beneath sapphire eyes clouded with sleep, they mock me, jeering, You are not in dreamland anymore, Clarke.

No, I am not in dreamland anymore; this is reality.

And I abhor every moment of it.

It is not that I have hurt until I could not stand. I have not unleashed rain over an epitaph carved into a slab of stone embedded into the ground. Not once have the ties of those I loved been severed from the earth's surface. But I have not loved as widely as I wish; I do not love my mother, despite our shared blood. It is our fraught relationship and her desolate state of mind that broke that possibility.

Call me despicable, why don't you.

She does not nurture us as a mother should; she has never kissed us goodnight or told us she loves us. Perhaps she her capacity to love has been stolen from her. I stand in her rightful place as head of the household, surpassing even my father's authority over my younger siblings.

Looking into their round eyes is looking into a mirror, hung on the wall of the past far behind me. Family resemblance runs deep among the four of us. Their frames remind me of the frames of the doves perched on the railings of our porch - fragile. But they have risen tall like saplings nourished by spring rain.

I remember those growth spurts that expelled the childish appearance from me. It was like shedding skin - like a snake, a venomous viper - and forming a new one with the luster and colors of maturity.

But I have not let go of my dreams, circulating throughout my mind since I could form coherent thoughts. It is a part of the old skin, a piece I tore off and locked away in a box, for dreams will always be mine.