Cassandra in Reverse

by Holly Smale

“How am I?” I say blankly. “Stuck in a time loop, Barry. Cheating the laws of time and space, but unable to elaborate further at this point.”

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.

Time is so incredibly fragile. It’s like tissue paper, like gossamer, like a spider’s web in the corner of a kitchen cupboard.

Emotions aren’t binary or finite: they change, shift, run into each other like colored water. They are layered, three-dimensional and twisted; they don’t arrive in order, one by one, labeled neatly. They lie on top of each other, twisting like kaleidoscopes, like prisms, like spinning bird feathers lit with their own iridescence.

Time is fragile; for every sweep of the broom, there are consequences.