Contention

The sadness of always being at a distance from things, either above or beneath...

I lay in contention on the warm seat as the light streams through my closed eyelids. A smile creeps upon my face as the clicking of the train against the rails, sound within me and outside of me, much like a heart beat. Contention. I had forgotten this word in sometime. Nothing had ever been enough, nothing had ever been  satisfying. But I find this word again today as my head hangs from the edge of the seat, as the blood rushes to the tips of my ears and as I feel the sun smile upon my skin.
Raucous laughter rise from the compartment next to mine and I see a bunch of kids that enjoy the summer as much as I do. In the seat next to mine sits a lady. Her wrinkles speak a million stories but her face speak one thing, as she sits by the window, eyes closed, a gentle smile playing around her lips: Contention.

Upside down...the world looks the same, but something is afoot

What we fantasize about what our lives should be? What we imagine our fates could be? And how sad it is that we loose the very essence of life chasing a better one? How we have lost sight of this moment that I am basking in, and how we chase that which may or may not come to pass? How pitiful our lives become as we delude ourselves into believing that we search for a good life?
I let the sun light wash over my body, purging me of all that is irrelevant, cleansing me of all delusions, and caressing lovingly every inch of me, as a mother would. I smile without opening my eyes, and cuddle up inside this wonderful feeling, and I realize something.
That this moment would cease to exist the minute I open my eyes. That I will be forced into a world where we are the rats and the blocks of cheese and the cats; where we are all of them and none of them. That we would end up devouring ourselves in the pursuit of something that exist within ourselves all the while. I realize all this and I smile. Who said I should wake up?