She opens the trunk of her car. Trash bags tumble down, coming untied. I glimpse girls’
clothes, probably juniors’ sizes, a flower-print backpack, sandals, and headphones. She crams the
bags full again, her eyes narrowed, her face drawn. Her hair’s disheveled. Graying. She reeks of
sweat. Seeing me staring at her, she flips the bird, rattling off a string of swearwords.
​          Jerk.
​          She climbs back into her car and peels out of the parking lot, her tires screeching on the
hot pavement. I haul her crap inside, all twenty-eight bags of donations, muttering to myself. The
job done, I grab today’s newspaper. Reckless driver kills seventeen-year-old girl, the headline
shouts.
​          There’s a picture of the victim.
​          She looks just like that woman.

            Beyond the dense cloud of smoke and fire, above the wreckage of modern construction,
at the edge of the highest peak of the twin hills, stood a lone figure, covered in soot and
sweat. She’d spotted the figure some time ago. Sharon was running, running in all directions,
desperately trying to rescue someone, anyone really, from the burning buildings around them,
giving up only when the walls caved in and the ceilings tumbled, destroying any chance of
survival.
            She took a deep breath.
            It was pointless.
            Everyone had died, and she had known that- of course, she had- the logistics of the
situation called for it. They expected it; and it wasn’t as though any of these people were
good people.
            In the end, they were criminals - the worst of the worst, but she’d been tasked with
saving someone. And yet, just like always, she’d failed.
            Sharon wondered if they’d only let her go because they knew she’d fail. Still, it hurt. It
hurt that none of the victims would ever experience the breath of fresh air as they ran down
the hiking trails, through the patches of forests all the way up to the lake where they’d jump
into the cold, yet intoxicatingly calm waters of-

Trigger Warning: mental health, suicidal thoughts, self-harm 

            Anticipation of what was coming was in some ways worse than the panic attack itself.
The thundering of her heart pounded in her ears. Vibrating numbness creeped into her
fingertips. Clenching her fists, she willed herself to relax. Flames licked the sides of her face.
The swirling pressure rising in her chest burst forth. Unable to restrain herself any longer she
grasped for anything solid. Her vision fading and consciousness draining away. She could feel
herself sinking into a pit. Suffocating flames of black consuming her. Finally, nothingness. I was
almost a relief.

            Her eyebrows raised to aid in the opening of her eyes, she turned her head slowly. The
thick fog that obscured her vision slowly cleared. She could feel her soul slowly refilling her
deflated body. She always manages to survive what felt like certain death. She tried to reattach
her hands to her body. All the connections in her brain seemed severed. Her head churned and
oozed. Forming thoughts felt like treading in molasses.

            Bounding into the room, unaware of their mother’s fragile mental state, the children
came. So many arms begging to be held. Request after request buzzed from their mouths. Her
quiet recovery was short lived. The reality of motherhood slapped her in the face. There were
diapers to be changed. She had to make sure dinner got on the table and soon. No one has any
clean clothes, not that anyone had bathed yet this week. Clean clothing wasn’t going to hide the
dirt.

            The small off-white kitchen was so filthy even the rats weren’t interested. The dishes that
filled the grim ringed sink would have to be washed before she could even start to make dinner.
​
            ​“You can’t get clean dishes from dirty water.”

Emma Flannigan wasn't your average Irish country woman.
In fact, she wasn't even Irish. And yet there she stood, in her
home in the small town of Ceallach, getting ready for a day
at the market. She finished pinning back her mousy brown
hair, exposing her thin, pale face. Although she was only 23
years old, her features were aged with grief. She had, as the
towns people often said, "lost her bloom" over the last few
months; slowly fading away ever since the death of her
husband, Seamus. They had only moved back to his
homeland there in the Irish countryside a year before the
tragic accident. And now, Emma, a very English woman, had
to find her life there, in their Irish home, without him.

​Looking in the mirror by the door on the way out, she noted
her pallid complexion, and, pinching her cheeks in the hopes
of color, only seemed to redden them, as if from being too
long in the sun. She untied her plain white house apron,
hanging it by the door and brushed her hands down her blue
cotton dress, smoothing out the bunches from where the
apron had been tied. Then off she walked down the road to
the market place.

            Three cardboard boxes were what she could afford. It would have to do. The tired,
whisper of a woman, her yellowed hair tightly pulled back because she knew there would be no
time to wash it, put the boxes in the cart. They looked small, so small and the cart so absurdly
empty that she took them out and carried them to the front of the store. The cashier greeted her
with a $12.00 an hour smile.
​            “Find everything you were looking for?” she asked in a voice that sounded like she’d
asked the question ten thousand times already that day.
​            The yellow-haired woman thought about that, wanted to say ‘no, she hadn’t found
everything she was looking for; that she had been looking most of her life and hadn’t found it
yet; that she was, frankly, god-damned tired of looking.’
​            “Just the boxes,” she replied simply.
​            “Looks like someone’s moving,” the cashier remarked a little too cheerfully.
​            “Yes, moving,” said the yellow-haired woman and then, vacantly added, “out.”
​            “That’ll be $4.75.”
​            ​The yellow-haired woman carefully counted out the money, two singles and an
assortment of quarters, dimes and nickels. She could feel the people in line behind her staring,
knew that they were annoyed at how long this was taking. And she didn’t care because she had
stopped caring about what other people thought of her.

​Trigger warning: mentions of r*pe, domestic violence, manipulation

I’d met her at the beginning of Summer, when the air was hot and full of
woodsmoke and bonfires, and the skies and the days stretched out as long and as
endless as each other.

She was a catalogue of contradiction - rebellious and straight-laced, fearless as
well as frightened, a woman who seemed to be riding the back of the world,
holding on with one hand, and to her, I was a small cup, held beneath Niagara.
It happened all at once, the way things that grow in the heat of summer often do.
I love you’s were whispered, half-drunk as the sunset. Days upon days were spun
together, drifted like dandelion wishes and half-made plans were promised, one
after another, after another…

All filled with her.

She told me she would give me the world. She would make something of me. She
pointed out the holes in my patchwork skirt and the rips in my dungarees, she
took me to clothes shops, took away my bracelets and stripped me to the skin in
a sweaty changing room with fluorescent lighting, dressed me in sensible jeans
and plain white tops, and bought me two of each while I laughed at the thought
of a “girlfriend uniform”.

Dear sister,

          Why do you love me when you told me you couldn’t love a lost monster? Why do you
restrain from erupting when I push your buttons and crash your creations, suspending your
plans? You’re flawful, my dearest, and this is why I open my heart as a loveless; let me present
my evidence, your honor. We dance in impenetrable fortressesses. You skulk and I scare; you
dance, and I dare the world to challenge us one more time. I miss hopscotching with you across a
soggy blacktop playground with pebbles encased in our fists.
​          Before I begin: Of course, there is no telling how much the world scorned you to date.
So, for brevity’s sake, I deem you the judge of our credibility (accounting for both me and my
unique species). Everything about our moral code is subjective, but I digress. Your honor, let me
open my case with a fact, because I cannot promise everything I relate in this letter will hold
truthful meanings for you. The word ‘shapeshifter,’ as you might have discerned from our title,
connotes our ability to morph, but not into people we have met.. Friends, Nature, humanity; this
is where the magic begins. We look into a long mirror, or any sizable shard of glass where our
reflections match the weariness of our hearts—and freeze. We capture the moment and hold it
close, because they tend to flutter away. Wings are too tempting for our kind.

Silence

          Humanity choked itself with its need to grow, simplify, and automate. The air filled with
acrid rain, polluting and stinging her exposed body. She suffered in silence, withering in agony,
trying to keep up with humanity’s quest to rule the planet. She tried so hard, sending out
warnings, but her body quaked, sending humanity’s buildings tumbling onto her back. Still, they
would not stop. Then, she retched scalding acid, it dripped down her bosom, and people fled
screaming. She coughed and choked, to no avail.

          Gaea sucked in a long, desperate breath. With it, nature retreated into her body and
disappeared. Her skin cracked, and her tears ran dry. The people moaned, sobbed and pleaded to
their gods, whispering apologies and empty promises if only Gaea would return nature’s spirit.
Their pleas were unanswered. Gaea was finally at peace. All that remained was her devastated
carcass. Humanity fell. The prayers ended, and silence, emptiness, and nothingness replaced the
cries and prayers.

Note: Story was originally published with She’s Got Wonder. They are not longer operational,
but the work can be found archived here: https://shesgotwonder.squarespace.com/journal/i-
used-to-be-a-princess

          For those of you who dream of “Once Upon a Time”, I’ve had it. I’ve lived each picture
perfect moment. Each chance meeting, every eye-opening kiss, and the most glorious of
“Happily Ever After’s”. I could tell you of ball gowns and castles and of the Prince Charming
who comes on horseback to rescue you from all that you have known. I have had it, and I have
lived it. But I have also lost it.

          I used to be a Princess. Any girl can be one and any room can become an inescapable
tower if you deem the conditions of your life fit to build one. And I lived in a tall tower, the
foundations built from my life, and its towering visage of my own invention. I hid there for many
years, melancholy, magnificent, and measured. A scared little girl in a graceful frame, watching
and waiting for someone to save me from my life and from myself.

          It had felt as though I had been waiting for eternity, the rescue from my self-imposed
exile untimely delayed. I grew more frustrated as the days went by, but I had friends in the form
of birds who kept me company and sang me songs. I passed my days reading the old stories my
mother had once shared with me beside my bed as I fell asleep. Whether it be day or night, I
dreamed of a faraway land without trouble or care, and a man to rescue and love me, and make
my life better with a single kiss. I wished for it every day.

          ​Then, my Prince Charming came.

          Her shoes were made in the year 1977. They belonged to her grandmother when she was
a young woman. They were wingtip derby dress shoes in a size 8-and-a-half with a very slight
heel. She’d been granted permission to wear them to work after filing a special request with her
employer. She’d made a very thorough case for the shoes. They were in beautiful shape,
closed-toed, and sturdy. They’d made her bring them in to prove that she could sprint down the
hallway in them. The shoes were made from alligator skin, her favorite animal, said to still roam
free in the half-drowned Atlantis that remained of the Southeastern American wilds, where her
extended family had once lived, just outside of Miami – what the shoes lacked in utility, they
made up for in history.

​          Tip-tack-tip-tack, the shoes used to go, smacking tiles as she walked back and forth
across her grandad’s deck like America’s Next Top Model. Now they made almost no sound at all,
just a faint thup-thup-thup. Principal Ndongo’s allowance of the shoes hinged on the condition
that they be appropriately dampened – several spaces in the facility still had hard, lacquered
floor, namely the cafeteria and gym areas. She paced around the empty facility, poking her head
into all the rooms that would be, any time now, full of human beings. During her extensive
training, she’d participated in several full-occupancy armed safety drills, but those always struck
her as falsely urgent, bordering on ridiculous. They were meant to further complicate an already
fabricated scenario, like trying to catch someone off-guard while playing Simon Says. Simon
Says get the fuck down, now, now, now.

          Risen from a blood-stained sea, a maiden broke through the foam-coated waves.

          She took her first breath. Pain sliced through her body as air filled her lungs, and she
released a cry that shook the very heavens. Like a child unleashed from its mother's womb.
          
          Violent and desperate.

          Saltwater flooded her mouth, silencing her. Choking, she fought the waves that began
to drag her from her birthplace.

          The force of the currents weakened her resistance to the point where fighting was
useless. The waves, no longer daunting, lulled her into a sublime stillness, cradling her until
she washed up on pearly shores.

          Pass the salt. Say grace at the dinner table. Say this could be something.

          We eat quietly by the window under sunbeams, listening to the music of a
songbird’s serenade. I can’t remember the last time we had a meal like this, together
and yet still so alone. If you could speak to me for the first time, what would you
say?

          Do you want to light the candles? I ask, and you shake your head. They’re just
there for decoration. Of course they are.

          The food is stale. Still, I eat because you have made it. This cooking, though
unappetizing, is one of the purest forms of love. I will not turn it into one of shame.

          When we finish, I notice the chipped edge of your plate. Even in this silence
we share it screams, I am here. I am lived in. A smile spreads across my lips, thin and
wry. Today has been good to us.

We find her by the river, clad in nothing but her blood-dark cloak.
            One of our husbands, a hunter. He carries her through stones and trees. He walks to the
end of the village, watched from behind bamboo windows.
            The mother does not weep when she meets his eyes. She does not even speak. This is a
fear we all know. This is one of many fates.
            We whisper amongst ourselves. We wonder if she is alive, if she wants to be. We know
what happened. None of us dare name it.
            It is Sunday, the Lord’s day, when she first returns, dressed in her blood-red cloak. She
gazes upon us with moon-bright eyes, winnowing basket in hand. One of us thinks back to when
she was young, when her eldest sister looked at her in that way, too. I’m still here.
            Some of us go home and teach our girls how to twist and rip and mend again, the cotton
cloth slick against our hands. Some of us climb small trees in search of fruit, ignoring the cuts.
            At the river, we soak dresses and talk about all the ways a woman can fail. “This is what
happens when you don’t guard your daughters.” We wring them dry, scrub them almost angrily.
A new day, the same sun, another question—repetitive, like a prayer.
            “What do you think,” someone says, “drove him to such an act?” We scratch our fingers
against the dirt, purse our lips as the water runs across our wounds. One of us washes slippers. If
it were my daughter, she thinks​​--
            She would have been safe.

​There is nothing more excruciating than rejection. Holding your heart out on a platter, offering it
to one whose soul you see mirrored in your own, only to be told no. No, it’s not good enough.
You are not good enough.
          You are not enough.
          The sting burrows its way inside, not content to settle just under the skin, but needling
deep into the void where your heart used to be, before it was ripped out. That’s what I was
reflecting on, anyway, when a voice interrupted my thoughts.
          “Is this seat taken?”
          The young woman, about my age, already had her hands on the empty chair across from
me. For only the briefest second, I thought she wanted to sit there, but then she pulled towards
herself an inch to make clear the chair was going with her.
          ​She was stunning. That was the only way to put it. Long rippling black hair that was
entirely wasted in this coffee shop—hair meant to be tumbling in the wind on a wild moor. Eyes
so bright and wide I could see myself reflected back, blinking stupidly. She wore a loose striped
t-shirt, jean capris, and ballet flats, all so effortless I felt clumsy and awkward just sitting there.
The only effortless thing in my life was split ends.

Terrill was not honest with us about the reason that he was sent on the extra planetary ship to
earth. 
          He came to us with that same old same old alien to human "I come in peace" nonsense.
And we, being schmucks, ate it up. We wanted to appear enlightened and accepting. We wanted
to think a superior being had traveled light years just to commune with us because we were that
special. 
          ​It's not like he was a lizard man who wanted to eat us. And he wasn't trying to repopulate
the planet or anything with a race of mutant aliens.  (In case you were concerned about that.)
Really, it was simpler than that. Governmentally, things had gotten out of hand on his home
planet, El. Terrill was a con man, a prisoner, and, to prevent crime, his planet's government had
adopted a three strikes you're out policy. So third crime, no matter what it was, meant that you
went to prison for life.

If I could have, I would have despised her until the ends of the universe. In the midst of a Bigger Bang or
explosive stars, through discoveries of new galaxies and my utmost desire to ship her off to them. In my
skin-sizzling, grumbling moment of teenage angst, an undying hatred bubbled for a certain Aine.

​A greyish glow dimmed the streets of Dublin, allowing a cautious light to evade cover. The stench of oil
clenched around my lungs, an old lad’s guffaw echoing across the pebble-speckled path. Owing to my
doting granny, I’d been well wrapped-up with a knitted scarf, gloves and a sprinkle of sticky kisses. My
boots squelched on the edge a rippling puddle, glimmering with an Irish dew. Yet beauty, thick as the
wandering cloud of smoke, left me entranced by my home city.

He made it big and solid and stable. Dad worked hard to keep us away from harm, safe underwater,
in our little refuge, our tiny cage, and we could play games, have fun, only it didn’t have much air,
or light. Dad was a master at suffocating, and he taught me well, how to hold my breath, to not need
air, or light, to endure darkness and hardship, he taught me that as long as I remained silent and still,
nothing bad could happen.
​
​Dad made us a safe house, but I was greedy, asphyxiating, dreaming of reckless swimmers, colorful
boats, sparkling ships crossing the oceans, and I dreamed big, I scratched the walls, created holes,
little cracks to let the light in, turned to the sun, opened my mouth, took deep breaths, swallowed
the warmth, and I felt grateful, if only for a while, grateful for those tiny holes that let life slip
through.

​I see dead people just like the kid in the movie. They speak to me all the time, they haunt me, and
they’re not aware, they can’t tell what’s wrong, they are confused, afraid, upset, they laugh, they
cry, they gesture, and just like the kid in the movie, I don’t tell the truth, I play along, and we feign
life and normalcy, as if no disaster can touch us.
​​I see the dead and we speak about the news and future plans and past regrets, because I have the
magical sixth sense. I watch them smile, dream, be happy, fall apart, then rise up and smile again. I
watch the loop repeat, the downward spiral, and I wave goodbye to the sound of ‘If you go away’,
sung by Terry Jacks in a sad but less melodramatic way, the banality of grief-to-come briefly
interrupted by loud bursts of hope, and it isn’t a love song, it’s but a goodbye song, and this is
saddening, but even more saddening is the uncertainty; the dead could evaporate and vanish and
you never know when it’s the last time you see them.

          On the day I was born in San Lalo, our peninsula on the Pacific became an island. A thin
strip of forest sheltered our casa on the eastern side from the strong winds in the west and bore
fruit all year long, but the ocean hugged us so tight we separated from the mainland.
​          ​Daily, my cousin Kika and I would play near the sea. We were more like sisters or friends
than cousins. She called me Luna, even though my name was Luana. Abuela said my name
meant happiness, and they named me after a traveler from another distant island.
          I was six when I noticed water responded to my feelings. Bathwater warmed with my
anger; cooled with my tears. By ten, the sea granted me things. That summer Kika found a
conch, and a grander shell appeared for me. Abuela called me spirited, feisty, and
jealous—always competing with Kika, instead of appreciating what I already had.