“She Made it This Far,” Dianne Casey

She Made It This Far
By Dianne Casey

She made it as far as the bus stop.
There’s still a faint mark on the pavement,
a pale drag in the grit.
Not an outline exactly, Just the suggestion of one.
The chalk tries to hold her.
It thins by noon.
She made it this far.

Carnations taped at throat height.
A teddy slumped lower down,
rain-dark.
People step around it.
The traffic slows.
Phones lift.
Above it all,
CCTV watches the watching.

A shop window doubles in red.
By evening the chalk closes in on itself.
The shape narrows.
The body disappears again.

The street keeps a version of her.
She made it this far.

Dianne Elizabeth Casey (she/her) is a neurodivergent and disabled writer, and the author of Where the Light Folds In (2025). Her work circles memory, the body, and what cannot always be said, returning to themes of inheritance, silence, and survival. She writes into the spaces between what is lived and what is spoken. Her work has appeared in The Gentian, Crackle Dust, Disability Arts Online, and Planet Ral (2026), and has been exhibited at the British Library and at Stockton Globe Theatre. An Arvon-funded writer, her work has also featured on The Calm Christmas Podcast. She lives and writes in the North East of England.

Artwork Source: “Backlit,” Julie Blankenship

Artist Statement: Tiny, found photographs from the 1800’s are collaged and altered with layers of ink, dust and glue to create images that evoke sparks of humanity and ghostly fragments of invented stories. Inspired by archives, the work investigates the changeable nature of identity in an era of collective amnesia. It alludes to metamorphoses, dark histories and gothic struggles, in the context of today’s political and ecological upheavals.

Julie Blankenship is an artist, curator and archivist, based in San Francisco. She taught at SF State University; and SF Art Institute, where she previously studied. Her work has been published by Cut Me Up, Photo Trouvee, and Egaeus Press; and featured in many exhibitions– recently Re-Bop, Collage as Obstructions and Disruptions, Simmerling Gallery, Chicago; In Flux: Calibrating the Unknown, Museum of Northern California Art, Chico, California; and Time/Space/Existence, European Cultural Center, Venice, Italy. She founded Visual Aid Gallery, and led the organization serving artists with AIDS; currently working with its archives to preserve the creative legacy for future generations.