Trials
when the circle breaks
Recognition showed Cassandra what
was there.
Then came the Trials.
Not tests.
Nothing quite so conveniently
arranged. These were simply
things that happened.
Things she had to live through.
And some things change us long
before we understand how.
Cassandra once had a plan.
A rather traditional one, actually.
Love. Marriage. Family.
A castle even.
She was younger.
We'll forgive her the castle.
For a little while, it seemed possible.
The life she'd imagined.
What follows isn't an easy part of
Cassandra's story.
And there are places where even I think
it's better not to make things lighter
than they were.
This is one of them.
So we'll stay with her. Close.
The gods laugh
Belonging is a foreign word -
sharp-edged, elusive.
I’ve never felt it, not in my blood,
not in this world.
Yet its pull is a human ache,
circling my heart, unending.
I was younger then, softer,
my dreams pliable.
Time has hardened those edges,
worn them to stone.
Too fast. Too forced - with him.
A girl’s dreams: a castle wedding, a
prince to save me from myself.
We plan; gods laugh.
He swept in like a storm - sudden
and electric.
My son, barely five, called him Dad
after three months,
his small voice weaving us into
a fragile circle.
Happiness flickered, brief as a firefly.
A child conceived, a tiny heartbeat
pulsing against the dark.
For a while, the whispers in my mind
fell silent.
Normalcy felt possible, a closed loop
of hope.
Then pain.
Blood on sheets, two months too soon.
The hospital’s cold white light
burned my eyes.
He fainted when the doctor spoke;
I stood rigid, holding the truth
like a blade.
She was born still - our daughter -
her silence louder than any scream.
I named her Solitaire: a precious gem,
alone, without us.
I wept once, alone, tears carving rivers.
My body had failed her.
Guilt coiled tight, an old wound torn
open.
He broke too, the light in his eyes
dimmed.
We married anyway, in a castle,
my dress a heavy tribute to a queen I’d
never be.
The wedding ring, a cold circle on my
finger, promised eternity but felt like a
noose.
He didn’t like the dress -
but he said yes.
His voice was hollow,
his heart elsewhere.
A part of him had died with her.
We tried for normal.
Devastating in its emptiness.
Days that felt endless,
nights with unseen tears
on both sides of the bed.
I lost my fire, clung to the vow.
Grey skies bled into cold nights.
He grew distant, a stranger in our
home.
I begged myself to stay;
he begged me not to go.
But the circle broke.
I couldn’t breathe there anymore.
Two sentences in a courtroom.
Over.
He married again, too soon,
a woman with my name.
Gods laughed, cruel and loud,
their jest a twisted circle.
Years later, a call in the dead of night:
“Help me. I’m drowning.”
His voice cracked, desperate.
I tried to reach him, but I was no savior.
A crisp fall day. Another call.
He’d ended it - alone.
The gods wept.
Solitaire is no longer alone.
He’s with her now, holding her in a
place I can’t reach,
both shattered by my love,
or its absence.
When I look in the mirror,
I see my soul weeping,
knowing all is a circle,
birth, loss, love, death,
spiraling endlessly.
But the woman in me, frozen in time,
stands still,
searching for belonging in a world
that turns without her.
Yet in the quiet, a faint spark stirs,
a whisper of fire, daring to burn again.
The gods weren't laughing.
They never were.
And Cassandra is still here.
That may sound like a small thing.
It isn't.
She has walked through more darkness
than she knows what to do with.
Some of it will stay with her.
That's how these things are.
But look at the end.
There it is.
That faint spark.
After everything.
Still there.
Cassandra barely notices it.
Perhaps that's why I do.
She doesn't need to know what it
means yet.
She doesn't need to turn it into
courage.
Or wisdom.
Or anything at all.
It is simply there.
A little warmth.
A little light.
Something in her that still reaches
towards life.
Quietly.
Stubbornly.
Very Cassandra.
For now, that's more than enough.
