Cassandra in Reverse

by Holly Smale

But life isn’t like that, so books are dishonest. Maybe that’s why humans like them.

I rarely understand what another human is thinking, but I frequently feel it: a wave of emotion that pours out of them into me, like a teapot into a cup.

“Time, as it grows old, teaches all things.”

I don’t understand it, but there’s just something in me that knows how to stand still when the earth shatters.

Because if things can be broken, then things can be changed; and if things can be changed, then it stands to good and logical reason that they can also be fixed.

Apparently the trick is to write what you actually want to say and then go back in afterward and surround it with irrelevant niceties and emojis just to make it harder to find, the way you bury a sweet in a pile of flour and force children at birthday parties to sift for it with their faces.

Time is the invisible thread that weaves our stories together. And sixty seconds can change everything.

I don’t think we talk enough, as a species, about how ridiculously difficult it is to make basic conversation. People act like it should be fun, but it isn’t.

The full truth is not easy or comfortable; it is often far safer to construct an alternative that keeps everyone happy instead. Especially when it’s the story we’re weaving for ourselves.