The Varsity

The Moment Before I Fall Asleep
The moment before I fall asleep,
Is like a dream within a dream.
I ooze into the kaleidoscope colours,
Of a far off land unknown to the waking.
But not yet!
And my mind pulls me back into my own consciousness.
It is the mediating between the two that has me,
Dangling on the edge of my reality,
Swinging on sleeps unruly whirl of entangling vines,
Its web of seamless randomness.
It is a floating feather on a tumultuous peppermint breeze.
In the springtime,
I sleep with a sheet lighter than air,
It caresses my resting body ever so softly.
I smell the blooming flowers through a quarter-cracked window,
And hear the crickets dancing in the midst of the night.
I dream of them in magnificent colours of purple and yellow.
I stand on the skyscraper of my surreal senses.
A frog sticks out his long pink tongue to catch a buzzing fly,
And I am sliding down it,
Into the mouth of a creature.
Psychedelic.

- Alissa Mohammed

Pure

This isn’t a poem about the way your fingers intertwine with mine
because they’ve never been entangled with another set of hands.
This isn’t a line of prose about your soft lips on my calloused, tired skin
because only the wind has caressed my body
This isn’t a work of art confessing little sweet nothings that you whisper in my ear
because the sound of my pen on paper are the only whispers that I hear
This isn’t an elegant post-modern work about the way you wipe away my tears
because my tears blend into my cheeks, become a part of who I am, molded into my soul
This isn’t a goddamn poem about you
because there’s only ever been
Me.

- Leelan Farhan