Cassandra's Short Form

[cassandrashortform]

Black Widow

Inspired by "Tiny in Her Halloween Costume" by Mary Ellen Mark, 1938

You can never truly love something until it is gone. Until the security of two feet on the ground suddenly earthquakes and you fall. Fall into despair so deep it shatters your bones, and your lifeblood leaks out of you, calling for his name. You can try to hold yourself steady and press the knife into your skin, watch the color paint a melody of his voice. You can hide your face behind a cage and drink until the present is a fluid, blurred mess. Smoke until your lungs explode, and you splatter like a Jackson Pollock onto the dirty floor where you belong. You can pray to a god who can’t save you, but none of it will erase your sin. None of it will put your shattered parts back together. For in the mind’s eye of his touch you birthed hands like spiders which crawled through every orifice of your body until you were wrung out to dry. No, you will never know how much you love him until he’s gone.

[cassandrashortform]

I AM: Part 2

I'm choking up blood. He’s telling me that there’s eternal love and my lifeblood is flowing from every orifice of my body. I’m crying in the pews, and they’re standing up, walking to the front and drinking the blood of Christ. I run out of the church as it threatens to swallow me whole. As his words constrict around my chest I start to heave, I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, “Please open my airways” I pray to God.   

The sin is a collar around my neck which draws me down and hands run over my body which drag me down and the teeth and nails which bite into me drag me down and your words your words your words scare me. Five, Four, Three, Two, One.  

How loud do I have to scream to be heard from something which refuses to respond? 

[cassandrashortform]

The Final Thoughts of a Girl in Flight 

I’m flying through the air, like a bird with wings outstretched. Wind rushes through my hair, and I attempt to smile as the skin is plastered to my face. It feels like a drop ride, like the “Tower of Terror” at Disney World. I stare at the blurred lights below me, glasses left on top of the outlook. It will be a memento mori of some sorts. Maybe a little girl will find it and try it on, marvel at the bubblegum pink frames, and take it home. My momma always told me I was a silly girl, I can only hope she’ll forgive me for taking flight before her. I can see my destination now, coming at me with outstretched arms. It’s so welcoming, and while the back of my brain yells that this is wrong, the thrill of finally giving into the impulse cheers at my decision. I then realized that I forgot to lock my car door, forgot to check my mail this morning. All inconsequential in a few seconds, so I reach out my arms and greet the marvelous grey of the concrete.

[cassandrashortform]

Girls

She held him close and smiled at me. The smile that masked condescension and superiority all at once. With a light batting of her blonde eyelashes, and a quick once-over, with their interlocked fingers and her lithe form pressed into his chest. It makes me nauseous. I feel the anxiety like a deep pit in my stomach, my face grew hot, throat constricting, tears begging to be released. So shakily, I walk away, clutching the one person who I knew would not betray me.  

[cassandrashortform]

Thunderbirth

A bolt of lightning accentuated the scream from my lips. My body roiled as thunder boomed outside. And I was pushing, pushing, pushing as the wind whipped the curtains and sweat poured from my face like raindrops hitting the pavement. “Thunderous”, they’d say, “She was thunderous”. Clenching the rug as if it were the grass I tore beneath my fingers, as slowly but surely a piece of you and a piece of me emerges. Emerges with a voice like thunder, blood-soaked and vulnerable. The house shook, and with it, did my world. From what destruction did I breathe new life? From my pain, birthed a warrior.  

[cassandrashortform]

Ashes

There’s a hole in her heart, where another stopped beating. She sifts her fingers through the gray ashes as if she’s trying to find diamonds, the beauty within all the dust. On her altar are smiling photos of two dark-skinned women. One is her—of course. Surrounding the photographs sits strips of burnt paper, crisped at the edges to mimic the passage of time and decay. Adjacent, broken eggshells she found on a walk where she discovered three dead baby birds in an empty nest, an empty, cracked container where life once was. The candles drip wax onto the black cloth, and she somewhat hoped it would catch and the flames would deliver her back to her one true love. A plastic Ouija board hangs above her altar, yet the fake, disappointing promise of connection was as useless as the broken record player to her right, playing “Bohemian Rhapsody” stuck on a wail of “Mama...Mama...Mama...” If only Freddy Mercury’s cries were a spell to lift a soul from the powdered remnants which coated her fingers. If only his words were a prayer.  

[cassandrashortform]

Laundry Room Condoms

“It’s broken, Annalise.” Curt cried, a high-pitched wail that seemed to crack the very foundation of the earth I lay on. It couldn’t be broken. The condoms were fresh from the laundry room. Untouched, available for every student to use for the deeds they would committ to stave off their loneliness. “Broken...” I say, slowly, quizzically, like the dead coming back to life after a period of inertia. And then I scream. And I scream, and scream, and scream, and as my voice calls out, enraged to the heavens, I hear footsteps pounding down the hallway, fists knocking at my door, and I just keep screaming, until I could scream Curt out of me.  

[cassandrashortform]

Lumps and Flatlines

Carrie’s last hope was the hospital in Hurleysburg, the next county over. The only place for miles around where the festering, painful abscess on her vulva could find some answers, and some reprieve. She solemnly pressed her head into the steering wheel horn, the blaring noise echoing the frustration she felt and the pain between her legs. A flat tire. A flatline on her hopes of figuring out what was wrong with her, of figuring out why she had this STD-like lump which burned and itched but could not be soothed by the medication. “Why me?!” she cried aloud. “Why must I suffer for something I can’t even control?” She shifted in her seat and a jolt of red-hot pain flared through her body, a trail of tears leaking from her eyes. With a depressive sigh, she banged her head over and over again on the horn as it cried for help from an unresponsive deity.  

[cassandrashortform]

Homeless In New York City

Bitterly, you pat down the musty cardboard. A rank smell emanates from the piss-stained corner of the bodega where you sit, idly.  There is noise which surrounds you from afar and up close, a cacophony of voices which speak of things you can’t understand. The people move like waves through the streets, they flow around each other, indifferent. Indifferent of each other, indifferent of you, indifferent of their lives. You clutch your garbage bag full of soiled clothes close to you like a jeweler would clutch a diamond. You wish you didn’t stink. You wish you could see more than the garbage cans, and the legs and feet of quickly moving people who pass indifferently. You think to yourself, “In New York, anything is possible.” So, you hold out your crumpled sign and beg to be seen.