Dandelions gently floating through the air, turning into stars.
I must be floating somewhere in a strange corner of my mind.
THINGS WILL ALWAYS ALIGN BY SHAWNA WOODS 24THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 132
Half her body weight in blood was lost in the last hour of labor.
Afterward she claimed to have seen herself giving birth through an astral projection-like vision, floating above her collapsed body.
Her child broke from its fluid sac, tore through her uterus, and wrapped its head around her small and large intestines.
As the doctor fished the baby out, the mother’s insides came along with it.
When she returned to herself, the nurses told her it was a miracle.
Tucked tight in her childhood bed, she felt the whole ordeal to be more of a cruel joke on runaway children, never mind being well into her 30s.
Creaking floorboards, clashing pots and pans, combined with sounds of scattering footsteps. Pain from the clatter rang through her head. So much so that she felt her brain might leak from her ear. And between fragments of sound, if she listened deeply with intent, she would hear a baby’s scream.
The new mother jerked from her bed, slammed to the vinyl floor, and crawled towards the door, with blood slugged behind her. Everything swayed and twisted her vision.
Her eyes opened to a window above a kitchen sink. The kitchen seemed dreadfully lonely compared to the years she spent there, helping her mother cook, getting yelled at for making a mess, and being an all-around energetic child. Out of the window, she saw dandelions gently floating through the air, turning into stars that glistened over the night sky.
Like my last vision, I must be floating somewhere in a strange corner of my mind.
Lights were dim; her skin felt tight, and all sound had quit. She thought of how brainless she was for fleeing such a genuine home despite all its chaos. How could she raise a baby, in her new-found madness, by herself?
She slammed her hand on the kitchen countertop. She couldn’t feel it, but she knew it had happened. She couldn’t hear it but she remembered the sound. The wind whisked through trees carrying a baby’s whimper.
Contained in fear, like her sweat was a thick glaze, she turned around in search of the soft cry. Confused, she peered down at the baby cradled in her arms, and her racing heartbeat muted the baby’s scream. A whisper she barely heard in her hysteria asked, “Would you like to come back home?” She didn’t understand.
A trash bag tipped over with filth at her feet, and the baby was gone. Something eager pulled her interest to the bag. Scared like a gun had been pressed against the small of her back, she searched through the trash. Through crinkled wrappers and mushed food. When she pulled out, in her palm was a snail. Its shell was a golden brown, and its eyes pulsated green with parasites. She squished it in her fist. Slime spread across her hand. She smelt her mother’s hair between her fingers. She closed her eyes to rest in its smell.
When she woke, a nurse delivered her a sleeping baby boy. The new mother drowned out the world and the boy smelt beautiful.
SHAWNA WOODS
I was raised as an only child in Long Beach, California. With no siblings to play with or internet, my bread-and-butter was a mechanical pencil I used to write silly, misspelled stories. Though I grew up in the era of peak cable television, the clutter of TV shows where families always knew the right things to say, and everyone played nice by the last commercial break, I never lived for. I went in complete reverse, staying up late at night to watch gore-filled horror movies and crudely drawn cartoons. By the time I was 10, those references spilled out of me—but of course I had no-one to talk to, so I’d write them all down. During my summer vacations from school, I spent all the time in my strange world written down on construction paper and Post-it Notes. Once I reached high school, I tried to dance, sing, and act away from writing since it reminded me of those lonely days in my room. But like a third wheel to my personality, my act for storytelling always followed me. English was the only class from which I could earn a decent grade. Thanks to my mother’s encouragement, I graduated high school with a short stay in community college. I was 23 when life turned heavy. I devoted myself to my family, as the people most valuable to me succumbed to multiple illnesses. My life centered around their well-being in their few years left alive. I was the last person they saw before moving on from this floating dirt-ball of a world. With the weight of caring for people I love pass on, leaving me to an empty life without them— around the age of 28— I decided to use the time to get serious about writing.