Quarantine Diaries

by Dallis Kehoe ‘23

V.1 Electrify my eyes

...And your ears perk up and that grin stretches across your face. Blurred lines move through the scattered, colorful light as we pass between the barrier of what is real and what we pretend is not. The alcohol smiles through our eyes as we find ourselves flowing with the vibrations that pulse around us. I see your smile widen as your body is overtaken by the rhythm of night and sound. I see you, and you become mine for a second. For a single moment you are the only one who is with me. Your face hides the shadow that is your past as your body moves closer to mine. My head tilts back as I allow my jaw to slowly unhinge. My hands dance above my head as my hips begin to sway in your direction. The air is thick with heat and sweat. 

I swallow my tongue as the strobe lights blind me beneath my eyelids. I have let go, to the point where I sway between the lines of fantasy and reality. My head spins as blood rushes through my veins, allowing your energy to move through me. 

I want to scream as my body pulsates with the music that fills my eardrums. You lean in closer as my vision begins to blur. 

We become dark figures with growing bodies and stretched out faces; passion glints in the whites of your dark eyes. 

The light sparkles off your teeth as I scramble to collect all your pieces, trying to hold them in this moment, forever.

I am reeled in by the hook that has been jabbed into my abdomen. It clings to my organs and wrenches me upwards as I float to a higher place. I am lifeless as my body is swept skywards. And yet, I am the most alive I have ever felt.

My eyes sting from the noxious gas that is my euphoria. My arms swing behind me as they fail to keep up with the world around them. My hands stretch in the directions of the world as it spins with them. 

We exchange breaths and saliva. 

Our bodies take over their impaired minds, slowly.

Now we look to the same moon. 

Your eyes charge with energy as they electrify my soul. I am injected with the intoxicating serum through which I lose my head, lose me, but maybe that was always the plan.

I become deaf as my eardrums open to the blaring speakers. The smoke-filled room allows my nostrils to inhale the excitement and energy that encircles me. My lungs expand and collapse as my back bends to the beams of light that encapsulate your hair, curly and slightly damp. 

My hands reach for yours, uniting the bodies with the minds to the hearts that are beating as one. 

Take me with you. 

please.

The night turns into the breaking dawn that is tomorrow morning. I find myself tangled in the sheets that cover us both. Your eyes close, and your shoulders relax as you drift to sleep. I lie beside you as my fingers run across your chest, rising and falling again.

This is your room.

The sun rises and peeks out of the blinds that are half open; they mask the outside world from the two of us.

I woke up overnight. 

The sun shone brighter than it had in quite some time. 

Love for life photosynthesized beneath my skin. Your touch became a fluid that could flow between my fingers and through my mind, infiltrating the barriers that had become my subconscious.

The moonlit sheets lay crumpled in the bed that had been unfamiliar to yet another body. 

Your hands reach for mine, and mine reach back for yours.

Now, we only look to the same moon. Times have changed and so have I. But you remain the same. Still as fluid and as beautiful as when I first saw you. I hope that one day, I will see you again.

Photo by Noel Nichols on Unsplash.

V.2 The Cosmos Weeps Milky Tears

My imagination dances above my lifeless body as I see her milky presence glide into my dark room. 

The night is bleak, as pale moonlight streams through the window. 

The lightness of the white room has become somber and heavy. The shadows sing to me as I drift away into the hazy breaths of an early sleep. Time becomes like sand, slowly slipping away, trickling down my fingertips and wrapping around to my wrists, cascading down my body like water.  

I lose control of the small life I call mine, and my mind dances above me, intertwining itself  with yours in a semi-conscious state. 

The man and woman sway elegantly in the glimmering shadows of the bedroom. Light glimmers on the walls in hopeful lines; all is not lost. 

The fabric of her long dress billows as he spins her round, her slender neck snapping as she is spun into a state of saddened grace. Her bony fingers caress his face and her eyes are softened by his gaze.

She gives herself away to the swirling cosmos around her. She drinks the milk, that the stars cry softly, to the music in her own head. 

She twirls and her dress flows around her, effortlessly ballooning as she tumbles through the sky.

I look to the ceiling and see nothing but the black of an empty space. He rests gently next to me, his breath steady, even. 

Her gaze is still among the stars and the dancers.

“Madame Camus” by Edgar Degas (1869/1870). Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art.

V.3 Shadows

And in the sleepy caverns that haunt my dreams, the flowery tunnels of my mind grow ever long, flooding every now and again with the uncertainty that entertains the sole shadow in the hollows of my inner walls.

Doubts of happiness fill my head where otherwise my dreams could have been. 

Grasping for straws, I fall into the shells of despair, never-ending black holes. I try to find the source from which it has all been growing.

Shit is upside down nowadays. 

In more ways than one I fall—confused and empty, my limp neck giving in to the gravity of my predicament. My soul longs for a happiness I cannot seem to find. 

I slip faster and faster into the quicksand that is time. I lie awake, puzzled at the blackness of the ceiling. It is vast and unassuming, an all-encompassing treacherousness. 

My mind is allowed to wander where there is no light to be sought. He dwells in the darkness that is his new reality, aimlessly thinking, walking, pacing. 

My fingers fumble around my mouth, trying to produce the words that fail to rise from the throat. 

My hands are around my tongue, and I don’t pause for breath this time. Nothing makes sense anymore, and I rely on my mind, sick from toxins, spoon fed by its possessors. 

I collapse from the inside out, a slow, quiet, ceaseless torment: the cause of my decay.

Dallis Kehoe ‘23 (dk3), loves painting, spending time with her dog, and running for Wellesley’s track team. Her piece “Quarantine Diaries” reflects the feelings of isolation, loneliness, and longing as experienced by many throughout the first few months of the pandemic. In her free time you can usually find her long boarding or walking around the lake.” From the September/October 2020 issue.