Elsewhere Nowadays, I only feel when my lips find those of a stranger's or when I drift away at night to a world that isn't here. My dreams take me to places that aren't always better, but at least the nightmares take place somewhere that isn't here. But when I'm face-to-face with yet another stranger, I feel that someone loves me, so I let them touch me, and it takes my mind to somewhere that isn't here.
I wrote this poem after having a dream that I was being raped by a faceless criminal. Cheery, right? I woke up to the echo of a single escaped scream that I managed to push from my dream world into everyone’s reality. While the poem is centered around the concept of seeking strangers for intimacy in order to escape loneliness, the middle stanza relates directly to this nightmare that I conjured.
Inspiration for this poem blossomed from the dissociation I experienced toward the end of 2020. Every day felt the same, and the only way I wanted to break out from the dullness of the mundane was through sleep or sex. The second stanza takes a step into the former of the scenarios. I express that I don’t really mind my nightmares, because, although they can be terrifying, they don’t seem as frightening as the cyclical life that I woke up to every single day. Nightmares are something new, like a new, encompassing horror movie, that may not be comfortable to view, but they are better than a movie you’ve already watched dozens of times.
The final stanza returns to the intimacy with a stranger. I equate this intimacy to love in the third line, but, obviously, this “love” is occluded by the intense emotion caused by sharing my loneliness with someone else. Every single person is lonely during the pandemic, and these liaisons provide a false sense of belonging and togetherness that can feel a lot like love in the moment. And that’s okay, but it is important to realize, and I have come to this point, how shallow these interactions are. But that is the beauty of being human; we seek emotion anywhere we can find it. Nowadays, dating apps just happen to be a powerful tool for such goals.
The final line ties the sporadic sex to the dreams in the previous stanza. Both served to remove me from my perceived, mundane reality, ergo taking me “Elsewhere”. This comparison exposes a severe juxtaposition since nightmares are typically connotated negatively, while sex is seen as passionate and enjoyable. Although quite different subjects, my mind, in both scenarios, is able to escape the cyclical everyday life that was slowly whittling me away.