By WILLOW DELP
I. “BLOODY MARY,”
You have to bleed to live.
But first: Here are two girls.
The living girl stands up, grips the blade. She watches the dead girl lie supine on the cool floor. Their epithets are not settled. They are playing these roles — for now.
Only the scarlet, spilled across the altar, produces reanimation. Fruits and flowers are empty decor, merely embellishing a ritual that demands real devotion. Real sacrifice.
II. “BLOODY MARY,”
The knife slides against the flesh, hardly audible. Skin is soft, pliant. Malleable. To be reshaped to the living girl’s will. For the dead girl’s life.
III. “BLOODY MARY,”
The altar is drenched now.
The dead girl stands up — steadies herself — breathes in. She is trying to think: the blood is rushing to her brain.
The living girl sinks to the ground, her skin paling, a river gushing from her limp body. Blood pools around her hair, forming a liquid halo. Her drained heart slows to a stop.
The Law of Conservation of Mass: matter cannot be created or destroyed — only transfigured. A girl for a girl, a bloodied exchange. Fungible—transactional—replaceable: she falls, she rises. Love, dripping red.
There are two girls.
You have to live to bleed.
Writer | Willow Delp ’26 | wdelp26@amherst.edu
Editor | Camila Massaki Gnomes ’27 | cmassakigomes27@amherst.edu