This blog is collecting dust...

I was going through my computer, scrounging for things to use for the two stories I'm writing right now, and I found this thing and decided to post it so this blog feels used (in the good way).
I wrote it for this English thing (i forgot what the assignment was but whatever) and I'm thinking of submitting it to my school's literary magazine (or whatever it qualifies as).

Department Store Surrealism

I’m relatively convinced the universe is hollow. That it is the absence of matter encased in a giant shell, like a fragile egg drained of its yolk and white and put back into the carton—a ruse that is supposed to sustain a family of four, or a generation, or an era of time but never will.

Physically that is not true. The universe is not empty. I know that because there are people here. There are people everywhere—dripping from the walls and climbing out the floors, crawling jaggedly down the sidewalks and rotting in the congregation. They’re clawing at the painted wood door and the polyester carpet while I’m barefoot and drowning in taffeta and lace and price tags and corset wires and invitations and seating arrangements. They’re foaming at the mouth to congratulate me, to taxidermy and preserve me at this exact moment. I am not quite a robust stag, rather a stricken bride. I cannot run in my white heels. I cannot hide behind my lace veil.

The attendant knocks on the door; she huffs and puffs and asks me if I have a proper size, if I like the color, if I’d like to try another style.

But the size is right and the color is fine, the style is okay. Thank you for asking. It’s just the mirror light is too bright. There I am, only pockmarks and dimpled skin—a topography map of some distant landscape, like Mars perhaps—scars and marks stretched across a broken skeleton. Yes, I say, the dress is fine. I forget to say the light is not. I forget to say the awaited night will not be.

They will throw me into a pyre. Or leave me at the altar, nail me to the floorboards and keep me as a sacrificial prayer piece. Oh dear gods, they’ll say over my diet thin body, please don’t make me her, with her size zero dress but no one deserving to share with.

And the attendant says she likes this dress; she says that many women do. I am many women. I am too many women. I am alone in a dressing room with the shadows licking at my ankles through the space at the bottom of the door. But when I open the door the attendant’s face is mushy, like fondant or gum paste, a wedding cake in the rain. She is tired and worn. So am I. Sadly, so will the dress.

I tell her I like it too, but that’s not the issue.