Cassandra in Reverse

by Holly Smale

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.

That’s the thing I’ve never really understood about emotions. We’re given unhelpful words for them—sad, happy, angry, scared, disgusted—but they’re not accurate and there never seems to be anywhere near enough of them. How could there be? 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.

Memories are time travel, and so are regrets, hopes and daydreams. When we die, the people we love carry us forward into it.