sun and moon // blank verse poem

from Multicursal: a portfolio by Natalie Schliekelman

by ODYSSEY Media Group

for Ms. Kelli // free-verse poem

the reeling

fractured future short story

*citations can be found on page 25

“No sigh relieved her speechless woe, She had no voice to speak her dread.”

Eden gazes into the mirror and she is paralyzed by expectation.

She is supposed to make the right choice. She is supposed to do the right thing, and everything will be okay. She is supposed to do the right thing and everyone will be okay.

Everyone tells her what the right thing is. No one seems to think that she could have any doubt about it, but she knows that her heart of hearts has not reached a consensus on what the right thing to do is.

It’s what’s best for everyone. Think about the children. What would they do without a mother?

Is there ever a time that no mother is better than a mother who is falling apart?

“And in her lurid eyes there shone The dying flame of life's desire…”

Eden gazes into the mirror and she sees her mother.

They have the same dark brown waves, although her mother’s is cut into a bob, and Eden’s trails midway down her back. They have the same heart-shaped face, the same eyes, round and a shade of brown just darker than chestnut.

Eden wonders if her eyes will one day share her mother’s fatigued gaze. The disillusionment with a world that deals nothing but hard hands. Perhaps she is naive to believe that there is still any gleam of hope in her eyes.

There is still hope; she can still see the world where things are okay, just out of reach. A world where her mother dances in the kitchen again, and cooks things that aren’t frozen pizzas and takeout Chinese. Where her mother helps the littles with homework and puts bright red coats and striped hats on them every morning before they leave for the bus. Where family time and holidays are a celebration instead of a ticking time bomb.

Can she gamble their futures on the promise of a fantasy?

When she looks into her mother’s pleading eyes, does she believe her promises that this time things will be different?

“… Shade of a shadow in the glass, O set the crystal surface free!”

Eden gazes into the mirror and she sees a scared little girl. She was never allowed to be that scared little girl, not since she was six years old, but she is haunted by her. She can see her screaming and crying in the back of her eyes.

Maybe she will choose the second option, the option where they are separated from the mercurial love of a mother who cannot keep herself, and are placed with distant strangers who will keep a glass wall closing off their love and a roof over their heads. Food on the table and peace in their minds. But not love.

Can she choose stability over love?

Can she choose a world where she could finally be free of Atlas’s curse, of a paralyzing pressure to hold the world on her shoulders?

“Pass - as the fairer visions pass Nor ever more return, to be The ghost of a distracted hour, That heard me whisper: - 'I am she!' — “The Other Side of a Mirror” by Mary Elizabeth Coolridge

Eden gazes into the mirror and she knows it is up to her.

She is the one who has to make the decision for all of them. She knows that she cannot live, afraid, in a hall of mirrored futures forever, looking desperately for the one that is pictureperfect. She will have to take a risk and create the world that she wishes for, one that she will not have to carry on her back.

Eden turned away from the shattered pathways, and focused on smoothing the jagged edges of her own path.