Cassandra (Cassie, Cass) is a multidisciplinary artist favoring words as her medium from South Florida who grew up between there and New England. She explores surrealism, the subconscious, the fragility of memory and duality in her pieces. Her work has previously been published by Bottlecap Press, RoiFainéant Press, HiGHasf Zine and more.
Chlorophyllic Hairs
I don’t quite remember when it got there, or when I became so aware of it or felt it so acutely… It that empty feeling I can never seem to fill but satiate only in an ephemeral sort of way. I am happy often, but the hole feels so tangible and whole, not slippery. I wonder if I miss him so much because he has that same sadness in his eyes as mine. I told him that once, he only ever told me that I have a beautiful smile. The new guy does not make the hole go away but he does satisfy the gluttony in me. He doesn’t have that sadness in his eyes so I wonder what he is trying to drown out with all of the nicotine, weed, cocaine and mostly alcohol. Maybe he’s just bored and I’m a pretty thing to play with. I said that to him once, about the stickiness. I told him that I hope he stays mostly pure and that the worst to happen is already behind him. I said that happiness is really slippery and that pain is sticky like being a mouse stuck to a glue trap. Just when you think you’re in the clear, your toe gets stuck on the discarded gum on the pavement and every other sticky thing in your path starts trailing behind, growing, stuck on your appendages like an external tumor. He didn’t know what to say. I don’t remember if I hugged him or he hugged me. Maybe he didn’t hug me at all. He probably said nothing. When I knew the end was near with the one with sad eyes it was also without words. As he held me in his unconscious arms, a wave of cold spread from my chest, outwards into my limbs before erupting into icy tears in my eyes. It wasn’t a matter of if but when and not why but how. Years later and the message sits, unsent but typed in a sea of blue text bubbles delivered unblocked, “I miss seeing the world through your eyes. I wish that I never met you because I hate that I still miss you and we don’t even know each other anymore.”
I bore my soul bare, ran circles around you treading my soul bare, so I grew roots, soiled and toiled, rotting amidst the leaves, the worms and the weeds. Reaching inside of myself and across to you only to see that you had long uprooted and grew. Naked, barren and tinged in an icy blue-dew, I am now green only with envy, longing for what felt like an eternal emerald hue, shimmering in the soundscape of summers, golden fiery hues. I remember your red too, orange only for an instant, too mild a color for your volatile brew. The creatures have burrowed a hole in my body, a parasitic crew. At least I can be a temporary home to something, like I once was to you. They fill me with dead things, cozy in decay. I try to warn them but I cannot speak of the stickiness of pain. Toes steeped in sap pick up all of the sticky things in their path. Spat out chewing gum drenched in lovers spit with a wisdom tooth in it attaches itself to the awkward appendage you pray to let go grows numb.
It is spring again and the creatures now mourn too. Home and hungry in my bitter-rotten embrace. All of the nuts buried from before lost, entirely displaced.
This tale should be happy, liberated from the seasonal grief, upwards the roots contort themselves, the rocks you once grew upon just out of reach. Unmarked graves dedicated to who you once knew. Initials carved into textured flesh, a souvenir of antiquated lustful stares.
Stay for a while, let the canopy of shade absorb your cares, may the hum of the wind rustling chlorophyllic hairs become a sacred prayer carrying you far from all of the sticky pain and nightmares.
˚₊‧꒰აwords ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ 