Written in Fairytales

by Angelina Nguyen February 10, 2021

"Quaintrelle" by Angelina Ochoa, Canyon Crest Academy '22

Dashed and divided. A million stars, all there, attainable, brushing my hand.

They split the sky, trickles of light faltering in an endless void,

Cleaving a bright white wound in young black flesh.

Shooting, alabaster memoirs, each broken and free.

They were testaments to the life I led,

Each silver sliver, a splintering reminder of my thoughts,

Actions envisioned, left without a body

These were my dreams

Now empty

Drifting

Where did they reside now?

If not my heart?

I was in the summer of my youth, my years unnumbered, my desires unbound. When I was young, I dreamed of becoming a beautiful poet. I was so painfully alone, and the only real company I had were the fairytales I read as a child. I think back to it often; the long nights spent, tasting each word and savoring the sensation of its every syllable. Even now, standing at the edge of infinity, the promise of a no-tomorrow, tying this knot, I recount those fairytales. Each a lucid recollection, pulsing in my head, gripping me. I remember them so vividly. ​ [Wonderland: birth, new arrival, a white rabbit] ​

Alice. Supine, silent, eyes dancing upon the pages of a book she had indulged herself in. As her focus stumbled, she began to find herself curious. For what did the great tree cry when struck, yet it never bled? Alice thought of the woman; it was her, but taller, submitting to the man with the axe. For what omen did the whispers of the wind carry, if naught stripping the tree of its leaves? Whispers were just quiet screams—what they shared was that nobody wanted them to be heard. Alas, her brown eyes finally faltered and lay upon a white rabbit. Handsome, bundled snow in a bunny’s frame, baby pink wrapped in lithe ears. Curious. Alice placed her book (one without a cover, one without words, but full of stories: an album) upon the grassy meadow and found her body floating toward the dashing creature. A white flash. Curiouser and curiouser. Alice was led from her meadow (her current and now permanent residence) by the fiend, her meadow where the grass grew gray, but you wouldn’t notice at arm’s length. There were golden rivers of inebriated sorrows, polluted, rich with tears. The man, nothing like her, or perhaps she was nothing like him. Though she only took his nose and his eyes, it was enough for her to hate mirrors. He drinks from those gilded rivers, on the loneliest of nights when even his axe could not force him company, and Alice always watched from a distance. She sat at the bosom of her tree- the woman- the shadows of its branches were but a promise. An empty promise, yet she still let them hold her. Sometimes trees wept too. Alice felt her body surge with purpose when the rabbit scuttled toward the edge of the woods. As her eyes traced its supple build, she gasped. Down a hole. Its mouth, dry, open, and inviting. The rabbit nimbly leapt into the shadowed depths, swallowed by the darkness. Distraught, she tried to search for a glimmer of white. Her eyes, the ones she hated, the ones she smashed mirrors for, searching. They roved the pit, and even searched for it in her dreams. Back to the meadow, to the axe, to the golden rivers, to the tree. It only struck her that she had returned when she woke up, album in hand, and the same whispers ravaging a desolate meadow. She felt her heart churning, a tightness in her chest that stole the breath from her lungs and push up bile in her throat. A white rabbit. Her ambitions, her dreams, her desires. [School: youth, innocence, three bears] Goldilocks. Never enough, never perfect. Quiet, a wraith amongst a sleuth of prowling bears. She slipped past each overwhelming presence, prayed for invisibility, and drowned in the ocean of stares. Young, naive flesh, easy prey in a house of predators. During gym, the air was thick with insecurities and the mirror clouded with bulimia. Girls, peering at each other. Waists were a measure of respect, the meals purged from your stomach in the bathrooms, a testament to beauty. A statement of superiority. A fool-proof test, they said, was to take out your wrist and see if you could touch your pinkie and thumb. This assessment had no right answers. She took the test the first trimester, the white of a constricted wrist, the humiliation of a centimeter she could not reach. It burned through her flesh; something that seared her very core. Branded like an animal, she wore her weight on her sleeve. Suddenly, each bloom of her body was extra, another unnecessary pound, more room for improvement. Too fat. She passed the last trimester, a sick triumph swelling her chest. Her one meal those months was a cold porridge. Marinated insecurities, shoved down her throat, never digested. As her lithe fingers slipped around her wrist with room to spare, she felt each crevice of the bone against her plastered skin. Beautiful. She was beautiful. Each whisper of a rib peeking from beneath her flesh, each curve she had surrendered to starvation. Too skinny. She cried to herself in the stall, her knees pressed against her salted eyes. Whispers slipped through the crack of her little cage. Too weak, so sensitive. She let her skin cry for her instead, her sleeve of scars, a memoir of her pain. A shell of the girl she once was, no longer did her eyes bleed. Too cold, emotionless. When she realized their judgement could not be answered, it was too late. All the mirrors in her house had already been shattered, the shards picked up and carved their own confession in her skin. [Trip to Grandma’s: loss of innocence, Red, a great beast] Red. Pale flesh, young and inviting. Each blossom of her developing body, the humble arch of her honey-hued shoulders, a great wolf’s prowling eyes caressing it. Crimson lips, sultry, pursed and spoke words she did not mean. The forest was an amalgamation of every ugly tree, tall steel, industrial trunks rising into a canopy of smog. The path was concrete stained with murder scenes, lined with beggars and plagued with thieves. Red held her purse close to her, the presence of the beast like the whispers she heard at home. Don’t talk to strangers. That woman had warned her, but submission wasn’t always a choice. That woman knew better than any. His growl was more like a purr. Why did all wolves howl the same at each full moon? His paws, large, commanding and less of an invitation and more of a demand. Each talon gripped her shoulders and drew blood. Suddenly, his size was so much more apparent. The intensity of his gaze, the strength behind his grasp. Her eyes met his. Her eyes, wide, dry of tears (she had none left to cry), that rich chocolate ringed with amber. The ones she smashed mirrors for, remember? He led her to a deep detour, one he knew the ins and outs of, the one alive at night. There he drank her like cherry-wine, and that night she suddenly realized why her favorite tree sniveled each night. That night he learned what her red coat hid, smothered his fur with crimson rouge. Her stockings were torn that night and never repaired. Red ran screaming and barefoot and sick. She tried telling. She tried everything. She was asking for it. After that night, she was the one who sobbed to her tree. He did not haunt her mind, nor her dreams nor her nightmares. He was beneath her skin, in her very veins and dancing in her blood. How else could she purge herself of such sin, but to purge herself of the very blood he embodied? She kept crying her cerise tears. [Fated Night: endings, a clock, midnight, a glass slipper] Ella: Midnight. Timeless were those hours, as the last ones always felt suffocating. She set an alarm that morning. Glass was always a memoir of her self-destruction. It was a perfect memento to everything she hated about herself. Never failing to bring out her shortcomings. Never failing to etch each one into her skin, another bloody masterpiece. Pain was beauty, remember? Running away. She was never good at anything, but above all else, that was what she craved. There was something about chasing an unattainable ambition that was so crushing. To reach out and realize nothing would return the gesture. Ella left a glass slipper for her prince, the gleaming white knight she constantly pursued in each false reality. That glass slipper was never for anyone, not the tree nor that butcher who cut the tree. Not the bears who paraded under a guise of friendship. Not the beast she met once but saw every night after. It was for her, or what she could’ve been. Glass because she was a cruel comedian. Slipper because she left hers at the wolf’s and she needed another pair. [12:05] I am late now as I fasten my knot. I say my goodbyes, to the ones who never cared about me. I say my greetings to an endless unknown, and an afterlife I never believed in. Even in my last moments, I touched their names with my tongue, running through their stories. My memoirs, my testaments, my life. They were my blood and bones, each a faint sliver of my soul. Yes, I once wished to be the very poet who turned tears into ink. My dreams, now empty, drifting. Where did they reside now? If not my heart?