The rain fell in biblical torrents around Aurora, as she curled up in bed, wrapping herself in a cocoon of self-pity. Sleep is confusing. Dreams are baffling. The concept of transitioning from one perceived reality to another is a tolerated madness. She wanted to get up, but her weary body would not allow her to, trapping herself in the cold bare walls. Empty bookshelves surrounded her, the only remnants of a broken childhood dream. She had once longed for a lavish gilded life in the heart of Paris, but she found herself in her childhood home in the cold suburbs of New York City. She gazed out the soiled windows at the grim sky. The ghastly streets below were lined with a few failing trees, leaves long gone, somewhere, lost in the inferno of violent precipitation.
Aurora was neither tall nor short, handsome nor ugly, just someone in between that carries out the will of superior beings. She watched as the sweet melodic rains turned to concussions of storms enveloping her world. Many of us live in a pattern nobody will ever detect, shuffling us through strange things, and eventually, the grave. Aurora was one of those people. All through her early life, she was comforted with dreams of becoming wealthy, living an extravagant life, surrounded by countless servants, who bowed to her every will. But in the end, she saw herself as one of those servants.
She would occasionally go to public places and be acknowledged by a few people. She was not shy, but maybe lazy socially. Not willing to seek out situations and connections that were not already part of her routine. She did not know what came from her perfectionist ideals. It hid her in a burrow, her soul trapped in a box with no opening.
She had a boring job at a prepaid credit card company, receiving well below the federal minimum wage. A drab life punctuated by rare breaks. She believed that comfort was the answer to all life’s problems. It didn’t solve them, but it made them more distant for a bit as they quietly worsened. Running was her single source of calm, but she also hated it. It made her feel as if she was the only person that wallowed in neverending pools of broken dreams. However running put her in a new word, punctuated only by the violent gasps for breath, and desperate sips for water. She often disappeared into long stretches where she was absent from work, like she did this day. She knew she would one day have to transmute her life, but it felt more like a distant dream of owning a castle, made up of memories of an old forgotten world.
The rain fell relentlessly, and Aurora rose. Looking out the window, she saw the world. In the bleak sunlight, the world was covered in shadows- shadows of the children gaily frolicking on the playgrounds, the drivers ever so eager to press their dreadful horns again, shadows of the perpetual roar of the city. Perhaps her lack of a fairytale life was due to, as Aurora blamed, time. Time was weird for her. It is like wax, dripping from a candle flame. In the moment, it is molten and falling, with the capability to transform into any shape. Then the moment passes, and the wax hits the table top and solidifies into the shape it will always be. It becomes the past, a solid single record of what happened, still holding in its wild curves and contours the potential of every shape it could have held. Her philosophy might have been weird, but the line between weirdness and pure unadulterated beauty is roughly 0.2 millimeters across and covered in ash. Aurora never asked where the ash was coming from. In terms of tacos, however, she was fine.
She would sometimes write long monologues, filled to the brim with idiosyncratic words. She compiled them in long essays, that she wanted to publish, but never would get to. Between her job, mandatory hours staring at blank walls, and long, mindless hours on her phone, she was lucky to even have five minutes to eat, much less worry about the hassles of writing. She sometimes would share paragraphs with family, to which she would receive a silent nod.
Aurora looked at the dreary sky, and it hit her. The future was just a succession of repetition, a sad joke without a punchline. She let go of her dictation of the world, resculpting the candle that constituted her life. As the rains passed, a neighbor swore she saw, for the first time in forever, a smile appear on the face of Aurora Blake.
Jordan and I felt madly in love. We called it ‘unconditional love.’ This was true, because once conditions arose, our love dissipated. – Aurora Blake, The April Monologues
Aurora was neither tall nor short, handsome nor ugly, just someone in between that carries out the will of superior beings. She watched as the sweet melodic rains turned to concussions of storms enveloping her world. Many of us live in a pattern nobody will ever detect, shuffling us through strange things, and eventually, the grave. Aurora was one of those people. All through her early life, she was comforted with dreams of becoming wealthy, living an extravagant life, surrounded by countless servants, who bowed to her every will. But in the end, she saw herself as one of those servants.
She would occasionally go to public places and be acknowledged by a few people. She was not shy, but maybe lazy socially. Not willing to seek out situations and connections that were not already part of her routine. She did not know what came from her perfectionist ideals. It hid her in a burrow, her soul trapped in a box with no opening.
She had a boring job at a prepaid credit card company, receiving well below the federal minimum wage. A drab life punctuated by rare breaks. She believed that comfort was the answer to all life’s problems. It didn’t solve them, but it made them more distant for a bit as they quietly worsened. Running was her single source of calm, but she also hated it. It made her feel as if she was the only person that wallowed in neverending pools of broken dreams. However running put her in a new word, punctuated only by the violent gasps for breath, and desperate sips for water. She often disappeared into long stretches where she was absent from work, like she did this day. She knew she would one day have to transmute her life, but it felt more like a distant dream of owning a castle, made up of memories of an old forgotten world.
The rain fell relentlessly, and Aurora rose. Looking out the window, she saw the world. In the bleak sunlight, the world was covered in shadows- shadows of the children gaily frolicking on the playgrounds, the drivers ever so eager to press their dreadful horns again, shadows of the perpetual roar of the city. Perhaps her lack of a fairytale life was due to, as Aurora blamed, time. Time was weird for her. It is like wax, dripping from a candle flame. In the moment, it is molten and falling, with the capability to transform into any shape. Then the moment passes, and the wax hits the table top and solidifies into the shape it will always be. It becomes the past, a solid single record of what happened, still holding in its wild curves and contours the potential of every shape it could have held. Her philosophy might have been weird, but the line between weirdness and pure unadulterated beauty is roughly 0.2 millimeters across and covered in ash. Aurora never asked where the ash was coming from. In terms of tacos, however, she was fine.
She would sometimes write long monologues, filled to the brim with idiosyncratic words. She compiled them in long essays, that she wanted to publish, but never would get to. Between her job, mandatory hours staring at blank walls, and long, mindless hours on her phone, she was lucky to even have five minutes to eat, much less worry about the hassles of writing. She sometimes would share paragraphs with family, to which she would receive a silent nod.
Aurora looked at the dreary sky, and it hit her. The future was just a succession of repetition, a sad joke without a punchline. She let go of her dictation of the world, resculpting the candle that constituted her life. As the rains passed, a neighbor swore she saw, for the first time in forever, a smile appear on the face of Aurora Blake.
Jordan and I felt madly in love. We called it ‘unconditional love.’ This was true, because once conditions arose, our love dissipated. – Aurora Blake, The April Monologues
