I Am Not Your Final Girl

by Claire C. Holland

The darkness isn’t so bad.

I got tired of hearing it was my fault.

There is nothing else in this world like realizing you’re going to live and not being sure you can.

And so she thrashes, smashes her head against the tunnel walls like a dervish, a devil woman demented and godlike, with her too-many arms waving, a container for grief and this other thing she cannot name. A broken discontent, willing itself to life.

Possession, 1981

She is so tired of waiting —aren’t you?— for the world to become good and tolerable and kind.

If I could float up above my own tired bones, change my mother’s-hands into talons, rip out the root of this unrest, would I?

This time I will cut it out, excise that fragile and anemic part of me, let it ooze heavy as iron from me, smother it in dirt. I have not learned how to be obedient, only to hurt myself as much as you.

I have known monsters and I have known men.

I’d rather arm myself in blood than be a pretty statue to stare at.

Hands can make cradles around bodies or throats.