College students, I would love you more.

They walk with heads up, eyes open.

I look at them (hoping to ignore how brown my salad is) and I can't help but believe that though they're looking around, their noses are still buried in books, or gleefully smelling the intoxicating perfume that is fantasy. Although time is passing (I still very much hear the endlessly pounding fountain) many are still brushing sleep off their eyes and into their slippers.

Is it just me, or do they all look the same? Same half-glazed eyes, lashes falling heavily against their cheeks, same yellowed smile. They're even looking in the same direction.

This place feels heavy with enchantment, as if the blue windows might cave in under the pressure of the jungle within. I can picture green ferns springing up around my rigid chair and my salad browning into moss. Here and there, a pair of flickering half-lidded yellow eyes

I recognize them, of course, because my eyes once looked the same way. And, everyone looks the same.

It's heartbreaking how sad these jungle animals are - and embarrassing, because I don't think I care about jungles enough.

See, it's sad that I'm more distressed over how disappointing my salad is than I am about how distraught they are. It's sad that I can notice they're looking at me but not want to see them.

And these zombies and sleepwalkers who populate my college campus, my town and my reality... they are more beautiful than the mountains in my backyard.

The jungle, a sprawling, self-conscious mass, is not a shelter because it is not solid. It keeps changing based on these stupid whims and I keep changing too.

I want to say that I'm full of music, but I fear I am an empty noise. And yet I show off my beauty, when I have just aroused from sleep, too. Ha. Sleeping Beauty I am not.

Or perhaps I am. Perhaps these yellow-eyed jungle creatures just zombies and sleepwalkers.

Violently, I'd shake one from his stupor. Perhaps he'd remark on the weather or offer me a stick of gum. But how can I guarantee he's even awake? Everything looks the same in here. And is it even right for me to pity the sleeping, when I lay upon my bed so often myself?
I must bid the doubt farewell. It must be enough to love and simply be. I watch the jungle break the sky.