Cassandra in Reverse

by Holly Smale

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.

Love is a courageous thing to pursue, and to me Eos represents hope, and resilience, and light in the darkest hour. She represents the strength to keep trying, even when you know you’re doomed. She represents new beginnings and refusing to accept defeat. She also represents the ability to change your husband into a cicada when he gets very old and kind of annoying.

know who I am: I’ve been trying to be like everybody else for the last thirty-one years.

Did you know why the penises are so tiny on Greek statues? The ancient Greeks considered small dicks beautiful because they associated masculinity with intelligence and control, rather than with lust and sex. Big penises therefore symbolized a lack of masculinity, or the depravity and silliness of satyrs and fools, whereas little, flaccid penises on a rippling body meant the ideal Greek man or god. Fascinating, right?

Dogs have an openhearted, affectionate and demonstrative quality I cannot relate to at all, but which I respect immensely. I just don’t want them anywhere near me, with their wet, smelly tongues and their hot, meaty breath and their filthy paws and their constant provision of bodily excretions. I like them like I like children: far away, behind a soundproof barrier.

get caught up with trying to read all the music around me instead of one note inside myself.”

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.

There are infinite things you can do with time. You can save it, spend it, stitch it, kill it. You can beat it, steal it and watch it fly. You can do time and set it; you can waste it and keep it; it can be good or bad, on your side or against you. You can have a whale of it; be in the nick of it or behind it; you can have it on your hands. Memories are time travel, and so are regrets, hopes and daydreams. When we die, the people we love carry us forward into it.

I suddenly wonder why we put so much store in words, when they can mean so incredibly little.

Sometimes people just say things. Because they’re bored. Or angry. Or hurt. Or sad. Or hammered and in need of attention.