A Separation
By Cassandra Caverhill
At night, you cry for a few minutes before the sorrow subsides; you don’t know if you feel sorry for him or if you’re pitying yourself. You lay your second pillow vertically beside you, pretending you’re not alone. Every settling creak in the house is his movement. Your sleep is leaden, back aching by morning, the mattress not yet formed to your shape. You open your eyes at 5:20 and remember the mess of your life. You tap your bedside lamp and see a centipede scurry across the ceiling, and now you’re alert, staring at a problem that is yours to take care of alone. You stretch in the darkness of the dining room, muscles straining under elongation. You write about the symbolism of suicidal thoughts while chewing toast; the part of you that wants death, the part of you ready to be reborn. What needs to decay and die—dishonesty or a fear of letting go? In your tarot shuffle, Fortuna tumbles out to tell you there is a brighter side, to be aware of the universe trying to help you. Below the crumbling bridge that comprises your hometown’s skyline, you walk the open pier alone looking across the border to a country you don’t belong in, listening to the rattle of rickety metal while transport trucks move commerce to and fro. You study the way the green river laps the concrete legs of the bridge rising to sky. There are signs at the end of the pier you can’t read until you’re closer: “No swimming” and “You’re not alone” with the number for a crisis line. And your mind flashes mistake, the call of the void sends you scurrying back to land, sheepish and shamed. At a coffee shop, you study Marion Woodman’s text about transformation that tells you, “Symbolically, if we are to release our own butterfly, we too will sacrifice a drop of blood, let the past go and turn to the future.” Are you chrysalis or lepidopteran? At the thrift store, you thumb through dresses you don’t need, fingers feeling gold sequins and you find it: a top in the shape of butterfly wings, the blue abdomen in center. It’s the same top you used to have eight years ago, inherited from your grandmother, worn once, and donated when you believed it too flashy for who you were trying to become.
Cassandra Caverhill is the author of the chapbook Mayflies (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her work has appeared internationally in journals across the US and Canada, most recently in The Coalition, Pagination, and Short Reads. Cassandra is a graduate of Bowling Green State University’s MFA program in poetry, and she teaches creative writing in her hometown of Windsor, Ontario. Learn more at cassandracaverhill.com.
Artwork Source: “Butterfly Sketch,” Lauren McKinnon.
The Turning Leaf Journal 