Corset

By Aarushi Sali

A tormentous mix of emotions strangled across my torso, like a corset squeezing my organs. So much goes on in life. The year started four months ago yet, it feels like it has been twenty seconds. The corset’s constraint gets tighter around me every second and I can feel my organs compress.

Not everyone wears this corset, some people have found a way to shimmy out of it and live with all their organs in place. Unfortunately, I am a person on the extreme end of wearing this abstract constraint. Life has thrown to me too many things, bits and pieces of reality that came together to crush my abdomen. The feeling of being trapped haunts me every day. The corset seems to come off when I sleep. But right now, as I sit in the classroom and stare at the black board, every time a new number appears the mathematics somehow pulls the strings of my corset tighter.

I sit here, trying to make sense of the numbers, symbols, and letters. I understand nothing. I feel nothing but deep agony. I wonder if I should have taken up a simpler major, a simpler form of life itself. I breathe in and breathe out. I continue taking notes. But the notes seem like nonsensical doodles. Everything in my notes makes me nonplussed. The nonplus I feel only makes my corset tighter.

The bell seems to ring a millennia too late and my slowed limbs make haste to get out of the classroom. On days like today, the corset squeezes me enough to make my soul pop out of my body and my soul observes as I do my daily tasks. I feel nothing in my heart, and my soul itself feels detached from my actuality. I feel numb in this reality. I am aware of my actions, but I simply do not recognize myself.

My feet carry my body out the campus which seems too big with towering walls and angry posters, yelling at me to join some clubs and make some friends. Once I am out of those halls, I feel fresh air travel through me, corroding my pain and bringing forth some relief. I enjoy this feeling for a bit, but my lungs have been squeezed by my corset. The corset limits this feeling of relief and slumps my soul back into my tormented body. As a whole now, I walk ahead.

On the street corner, I help myself to some chair and inspect the wide streets. Vendors selling fruits and flowers seem to have enough air in their lungs to voice their prices, their loud noise makes me believe that they only have air because they have escaped the corset. The warm chai slips inside my body, the warmth slowly numbs me as whole – heart, body, and soul.

I take this cosy body and walk to the place of my escape. A place where the abstract corset comes off and the world goes away. I stepped foot through the big door and the smell of pure comfort enveloped my thoughts. The smoky smell of wood welcomed me with camaraderie. The familiar elderly lady with the vintage glasses gave me a knowing nod, her smile loosening my torturous corset. The woody smell of pages and covers overpowered the hardships of life. I went between two shelves and tugged at a book. As I held it in my hands, the strings of my corset came undone. I found myself a seat by a window with sunlight trickling in and flipped through the pages. While I started reading, the corset slipped away, and my organs felt in place again in the solace of the library.

By Aarushi Sali