As part of my metaphysical doctoral work, I’m drafting a short story that weaves my dissertation’s core thesis into fiction: the alchemical power of unmasking. I’ve decided to open up my notebook and share the story with you here, piece by piece, as it comes to life. This is part 2. If you missed part 1, you can read that here:
Chapter 1: The Architecture of the Mask (continued)
My mind flickered back to the Tuesday that I fractured. I was standing at the whiteboard, the dry-erase marker a chemical sting to the nostrils. To the twenty 3rd graders in front of me, I was a pillar of stability. To my own body, I was dandelion fluff in a hurricane.
The air-conditioner was hissing; a rhythmic wheeze that felt like a drill against my temple. Outside, the lawn crew was trimming the hedges. The sound rippled through my spine. My skin felt too tight, my shirt a straitjacket of cotton that rubbed against the raw nerves of my neck. “Miss” a student asked, their voice a piercing that made my teeth vibrate. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t crumble. The polite ancestor took the wheel. She adjusted my glasses with a steady hand. She offered a smile that was perfectly calibrated; warm, authoritative, and entirely hollow. I watched myself from the ceiling, a ghost hovering over a body that was screaming in staccato while my mouth spoke in composed, measured prose about how the Sun is a star.
I felt a sharp, familiar lightning bolt strike my hip. Every lie I’d told to fit into a neurotypical classroom was filed away in my marrow. Every sensory overload I’d suppressed was now etched into my occipital nerve.
“I can’t stop,” I whispered, the adult voice raw and jagged. “If I stop, there is nothing underneath. Just a pile of broken bones and a child who forgot how to breathe.”
Elara didn’t flinch. She leaned in, her scent of petrichor filled my lungs, grounding me to the dirt. “You didn’t forget how to breathe,” she murmured, “You were taught to hold your breath so you wouldn’t disturb the air. You were a master architect before you could tie your own shoes.”
She reached out a hand that felt like a cold compress against my burning forehead. “Then let us go to the forge,” Elara said, “Let us see what the child saved before you buried her.”
The garden began to bleed at the edges. The green of the roses faded into the soot of a memory. We weren’t in the sun anymore. We were in the cramped, quiet heat of a kitchen from over forty years ago. A place where voices were kept low and needs were considered noise.
In the center of the gloom stood a furnace, its door glowing with the dull orange of suppressed meltdowns and quiet hands. And there she was. A small, ghostly version of me, standing at the anvil with a hammer too heavy for her wrists. She wasn’t playing, she was smithing. She was beating a sheet of silver into the shape of a smile. Her own tiny face already vanishing behind the metal.
“She’s still in there,” Elara whispered, nodding towards the small figure. “Running the bellows. Keeping the fire hot so the mask never slips. Don’t you think she’s tired of the heat?”
…drafting continues…
With grit and grace, Brandi Lynn ♡
Enjoyed this piece? Here are two ways to bring this work into your physical space:
📚 Hold the Book: My debut prose-poetry collection, Where the Broken Light Falls, is available now on Amazon. [Order the Book Worldwide Here]
🎨 Studio News: My studio storefront for limited art drops, signed books, and digital chapbooks is currently in the works! You can follow along or leave a studio tip to support the craft while the listings are being prepared. [Support the Studio on Ko-fi]
I'm Brandi Lynn. Author, artist, and literacy educator. Welcome to this quiet sanctuary for the outliers, pattern-seekers, and sensory-overloaded. If these words or images found a home in you, I'd love for you to stay.
For more grit, grace, and visual art find me on Instagram — Sent2MeDesigns (Art) and ByBrandiLynn (Poetry) or at my website ByBrandiLynn.com
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