JUVEN
Pandora Atones For Her Sins In Alphabetical Order
by Mia Golden
I meet Pandora for the first time on Fashion Avenue, her fingers like fishhooks looped through shopping bags. Her thumb rips through the gullet of a shoe box and I expect to see moth-eaten hunger, waiting to flutter out, to make a nest in the weeds of this concrete jungle. Instead, she pulls out crushed velvet heels. Stilettos. Size 8. They’d probably fit me. I flex the arch of my foot.
The second time, she weeps over the body of my sister, gripping her lead-laced hand. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Her cries mix with the hum of mosquitos and I am statuesque, balancing my grief behind my eyes. Pandora draws her moonlight-tipped sword, slicing through the dog tags on my sister’s neck. She tosses them to me, where they land beeping like a time bomb. She turns on her heel, off to mourn another woman in a blood-stained uniform. I remember a word I thought I had long-since forgotten: Catalyst.
I see her once more, as an arborist, a lover, a killer. I see her embrace the dryad sleeping in the coastal dew, and commit a crime of passion. She slashes at the stump with her hatchet, not caring as the sequoia’s splinters puncture her fingers. Those fishhook fingers, gripped by curiosity, etched with the outline of the pin-hinged prisons she’s torn into. I watch Pandora kiss the dissolving nymph’s forehead as she looks for hope between the age rings. I find a sliver of wood in the space behind my knee. Like shrapnel, it burns and makes itself known.
I have tried to hate Pandora. I have tried to pierce her septum on my dartboard, cursing her and all the destruction she has caused. I have tried to court her, to kiss her, to kill her, to fell her like a blue oak. I have tried to understand her, but that would mean reflecting on myself as well, something I try to avoid at all costs. Because I too am Pandora. I break down boxes and cry as it rains. I watercolor myself a tombstone. I dig my bare feet into the ground. It rips open, swallowing me. As I fall, I do what she did. I claw through with an inquisitive thirst.
The second time, she weeps over the body of my sister, gripping her lead-laced hand. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Her cries mix with the hum of mosquitos and I am statuesque, balancing my grief behind my eyes. Pandora draws her moonlight-tipped sword, slicing through the dog tags on my sister’s neck. She tosses them to me, where they land beeping like a time bomb. She turns on her heel, off to mourn another woman in a blood-stained uniform. I remember a word I thought I had long-since forgotten: Catalyst.
I see her once more, as an arborist, a lover, a killer. I see her embrace the dryad sleeping in the coastal dew, and commit a crime of passion. She slashes at the stump with her hatchet, not caring as the sequoia’s splinters puncture her fingers. Those fishhook fingers, gripped by curiosity, etched with the outline of the pin-hinged prisons she’s torn into. I watch Pandora kiss the dissolving nymph’s forehead as she looks for hope between the age rings. I find a sliver of wood in the space behind my knee. Like shrapnel, it burns and makes itself known.
I have tried to hate Pandora. I have tried to pierce her septum on my dartboard, cursing her and all the destruction she has caused. I have tried to court her, to kiss her, to kill her, to fell her like a blue oak. I have tried to understand her, but that would mean reflecting on myself as well, something I try to avoid at all costs. Because I too am Pandora. I break down boxes and cry as it rains. I watercolor myself a tombstone. I dig my bare feet into the ground. It rips open, swallowing me. As I fall, I do what she did. I claw through with an inquisitive thirst.
Mia Golden (she/her) is a teen writer who is featured or forthcoming in Perhappened Mag, All Guts No Glory, Eunoia, and more. She edits for Interstellar Lit and hopes you do something that makes you happy today!