The Dragonfly

 

Painting by Vasili Aleksandrovich Kotarbinsky

She walked to the edge of the lake and stared endlessly at her own reflection. She made numerous faces, trying to find herself again. She did not recognize any of the faces staring back at her. She had become her own stranger. When did it happen? She wondered. She sat down on the nearest rock and continued to stare at this stranger. The face that was staring back was the face of a failed woman, sad, unhappy with the choices she had made. At first, this woman was demanding, an action taker, then just as sudden, the face changed into a sad pathetic shell of a being, and she pondered how she’d gotten here. She had it all once, the whole American dream… then one day, it just vanished. She has no memory or awarness of it happening. does not remember it happening. It was all gone. She was alone, for the first time in her life and she had no clue of how to start living. She had lived in other’s shadows for so many years. She had lost her identity long ago. She knew diapering and the house keeping. She knew nothing else. She had become nobody. All those years she had been wasting away. Various lovers had come and left her with a wounded heart. Friends she thought she had long one by one disappeared. She felt she was no longer interesting for even witty repartee. Tonight she can see herself by the lake rotting in the dark like the leaves under her feet. She wants to feel free, but the face in the reflection mocks her, it tells her it is too late for dreams. All her thoughts, actions and hopes led to this moment before her acumilated nothingness; it starts to scream at her that she is nothing but waist. She begins to believe all these lies; she succumbs to the slowly decaying figure in the reflection. Her body begins to give, her face is sunken in like the reflection, her skin goes slack, and it begins to putrefy right before her eyes. She tries to cry, but her tears are long gone, wasted on the vultures that had preyed on her leaving deep marks on her body, mind, and soul. With a strenuous lift of her head, and she looks at the face again, one last time, and catches a tiny glimmer of hope, an almost insignificant tiny twinkle. She looses herself to it, surrenders her soul, her heart and body to this small glimmer. It begins to grow, slowly engulfing her face in this beautiful glow. Her face is coming back. She finds her honest smile! She slowly rises, allowing the glow to completely flow through her body. Her prayer has been answered. She has become what a beautiful Dragonfly! She finally has wings and feels free for the first time since she was born. She is a reflection of her old self, but better. She is no longer enslaved to anyone, she is master of her destiny and she is going to take this world and make it her own. She will have everything she always wanted. Her transformation has finally begun.

Recognition Cognition

Illustration  by  Priscilla Burris

It had been twenty years, she realized as she slipped the key into the lock. Twenty years since she left this place, this house. His house. Oh, she had been back for visits, short visits, and every single time she approached that door she felt the same icy shiver invade her heart and spread through her veins. Why had she thought this time would be different?

Cassie was the oldest of three girls born to James and Lorena Trent. She was a big girl, had always been big, even as a child. Tall, with big bones and dark hair, she was completely different than her sisters. She always stood out, never fit in. Christine and Cathy were petite and large blue eyes shone out of their magnificent faces. When they were little, blonde manes floated as they flew into the air, out of Daddy's arms. They would squeal and laugh when his giant hands grabbed them back and folded them into him, one and then the other. Cassie was too big to throw. Later, they were athletes, just like him. Cassie liked to huddle in a corner, writing her heart out.

"I am not going there," Cassie thought. "It doesn't matter anymore." She glanced at her watch. She had arrived early, of course, and the girls would be late. They were always late, just like Mom. "Some things never changed," she chuckled.

Opening the door, Cassie stood in the doorway for a moment and breathed in her childhood. She knew this house inside and out. She had grown up here, had learned to love here, had her heart broken here. Her mother had died here, in a bed in that corner.

"Not a thing has changed," she murmured as she stepped inside. "Not one thing."

Cassie's relationship with her father had always been strained. She knew he loved her, had never doubted it, but she never thought he liked her. He had never been truly comfortable with her, nor she with him, and she had always searched for a reason. When she was twelve, she convinced herself it was because Mama got pregnant and he had been forced to marry her. Of course, the math didn't work out - Cassie had arrived eleven months after their wedding. When she was in high school, she decided the reason was because she was so much like her mother. Cassie was every bit as much like her mother as Christine and Cathy were like him. The traits that disturbed him about her mother disturbed him about her, too. By the time she married and left their home, Cassie had determined it was her father's jealousy. She and Mama had a bond neither shared.

Regardless of the cause, Cassie had long ago given up on the hope anything would change. That didn't matter now anyway. Daddy was lying in a hospital bed. No one could say for how long. He had asked his girls to find some papers he needed. "They're in my bottom dresser drawer," he said, "somewhere in the stack of old stuff."

Looking down at her watch, Cassie decided to get started. "It will be time to be back at the hospital before the girls even show up," she thought, moving down the hallway to his bedroom. Feeling like an intruder, she took a deep breath and opened the drawer. Inside were two stacks of paper in varying sizes and shapes. She removed the larger stack, which immediately slipped out of her hands, spreading all over the floor. "Dammit," she cried. "Why am I always so clumsy when I'm here?" She could never please him because she could never do anything right.

As she moved across the floor on her hands and knees, her eyes fell on something that looked oddly familiar. Moving toward it, she recognized a card she had made him when she was ten. Grasping at others, she was shocked to find every card and poem she had ever written him. Every. Single. One. She had always believed he thought her writing was stupid. He seemed to not understand the love that had gone into it, what it meant to her. She thought he had never understood her. But here they all were. Everything.

"All these years, all the bad feelings," Cassie said, "I'm not sure I ever knew him. Could I have been wrong?" Quickly picking up the remaining papers, Cassie grabbed what she was sent to get and hurried out the door. "The girls can just meet me there," she thought.

Driving to the hospital, Cassie's heart swelled until she wondered if her body could contain it. She parked the car, ran through the front doors, took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator, and burst into her father's room. "I found them, Daddy," she cried, waving his papers, "along with so much more!" After collecting herself, she told him she had found the cards and poems he had kept. "I never thought you liked my writing," she said, brushing away tears.

"Oh those," James said. "I figure I'd hold on to them so the when the press would come interview me after you became a famous writer, I'd have something to show them. He gave her a slight wink." Life had held Cassie hostage over the years, and she had given up on her youthful dream - until now.

"He did believe in me," Cassie told her sisters later. "All the years I thought he didn't understand me, would never be proud of me. I was wrong. We've wasted so much time, Daddy and me." They all cried and hugged, then Cassie headed back to the hotel. Once in her room, she opened her computer bag, got out her computer, turned it on, and started writing.