Captured

Amazing artist Catrin from Switzerland works with multimedia images, tearing them up and reworking them digitally. More of her work can be found at her Red Bubble address.

Bottom of the Well

I can see you folded in on yourself like a sleeping winkle. You are bent like a pretzel, looking uncomfortable — but you are asleep, so there must be some degree of comfort. There is a shadow of consternation on your face, resting between your eyes and in the angle of your lips.

You are bunched. Crumpled. One shoulder juts out and up like a warning, holding the world at bay. A tangle of sheets might otherwise have been pleasant, but here they look more like swaddling or ties, binding you in a frustrated mess.

I look out the window, through the shimmered glass onto a dry garden of unforgiving soil. Inside it’s cool, but outside the day already begins to feel the harsh hand of heat behind it. It’ll be a few hours yet before the blowflies hide inside the porch and the dogs lie flat in a confused stupor.

You are asleep. So far away. I watch, looking for any movement in your eyes, like they do in books and movies. Apparently that is a sign that you are dreaming. REM sleep they call it. I imagine it is like watching a movie play out on the inside of your eyelids, and your sleeping body only has to settle back into its mental cinema chair and shovel in popcorn. I’m waiting for you to move your legs and arms like the dogs do when they see themselves in their own movies.