Ensemque cruore spumantem / And the sword frothed with blood, and: Origin story for the apocalypse

Ensemque cruore spumantem / And the sword frothed with blood, and: Origin story for the apocalypse Kassie Sarkar (bio) The other brown girl turns to Elissa during lecture. Fuck, Marry, Kill, she asks, Virgil, Aeneas, Dido? Elissa learns to translate The Aeneid between 8:15 & 8:55 in the morning. Mister calls her Dido during roll. But will the queen's power fix my translation before recitation? Mister pulls the map down, clicks it against the linoleum tiles, shows the class Carthage. Elissa raises her hand. Was Dido black? In the nurse's, Elissa waits for her blood sugar to come up, crushes a juice box. The other brown girl sits & the two laugh cross-legged on the floor, ignore white kids staring from the hall. Kill Aeneas. Fuck Virgil. Marry Dido. Can I still switch to Spanish? Elissa worries. I'd have more help there. The other brown girl shakes her head, grabs her hand, squeezes: I can help you. Well, actually, Mister begins, she was Phoenician, so she would have come from… he motions out of Africa. Elissa sees his teeth flash white, fiddles instead with a loose loc She forgets ferro, then confuses a gerund for a subjunctive, so a white boy takes over translation. & Dido dies, stabs herself on the pyre with an audience. Her blood burns what's left of the Trojan. Elissa stands, notices red pooling, then feels the slick wet that gives her maroon fingers. She cleans her chair alone as the other brown girl distracts Mister. & Elissa remembers something ancient. Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 149] Origin story for the apocalypse When Milkdromeda is born,I think they will use they/them pronounsand have heavy "natural" breasts hangingdown to their navel like bursting mangoes,and they will cartwheel and backflip aroundthe universe, eating smaller solar systems,getting star crumbs on their titties,—dust and asteroids and big brown nipplesflapping around in the interstellar.Milkdromeda will never feel exposed,will never blush. There will be no one aroundto shame them or change them. Instead,they will wander and laugh and dancefrom galaxy to galaxyeating, and loving, and reading theory,and they will never feel lonely, [End Page 150] will never even know the word.They won't need it. [End Page 151] Kassie Sarkar Kassie Sarkar is an emerging interdisciplinary writer, artist, and community organizer living on the colonized lands of the Munsee Lenape peoples, what is currently known as New Jersey. She has a Master's in Humanities and Creative Writing from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor's from Emory University. Within the literary world, she is a reader at Passengers Journal and a freelance editor; while outside, she wears hats in the fields of early childhood education, art and oral history, and independent research. Follow her on Instagram at kaskar.creates or her website www.kassiesarkar.com.