Before & After, by Alexis Rhone Fancher

Photograph of Alexis Rhone Fancher by unknown photographer. Photo provided by the author.

Before & After
 
I know that girl staring back at me in the photo. She’s moody, pensive; she exudes melancholy. Something terrible happened to her. Her wholeness and beauty irrevocably compromised. She wasn’t stupid. She got it right away. Life on life’s terms or not at all. Choose.
 
How the lush, sparkling beauty became a human disaster in one horrific car crash moment. How promise became past tense, all her talent and self-confidence flung out the shattered windshield.
 
Who could she have been? The girl thought she knew. The adoration. The fame. Her long legged confidence that opened every door. How many times did she have to go over it, the idea, the proposition, the surety her lover had that he was about to die? Why didn’t she listen? Why didn’t he make her? The stakes had never been higher. He was smarter, older by ten years. Back then thirty seemed ancient. Now, decades later,  I fixate on that sad girl. If I concentrate, I can still get into her body, her brain. Her brief perfection. This was her fault. She wanted to show him off, flaunt the old lover with the new. She got a lot more than she bargained for. OR She didn’t ask for this.
 
That girl, clueless, devastated by a single bad decision, all her dreams dashed in an instant. 
 
Post-car crash, she had an ongoing flirtation with suicide. At first she was overwhelmed. So many ways to kill herself. Starvation, slashed wrists. Overdose. Or her mother’s trusty Glock, tucked away in her sweater drawer. The sad girl considered her options carefully. Then she chose heroin. 
 
Some nights, alone in her room, after she shot up, she’d count the latticework of scars that marred her left leg from knee to upper thigh. Her cruel version of counting sheep. Still, she couldn’t sleep for worrying. What would become of her? Could she still have a life? Would anyone ever love her? It was all she could think about. Her father called her a narcissist. And she believed him.
 
The sad girl avoided full-length mirrors, kept herself clothed. Stopped going to the beach. She hid herself from herself, courting Death, mercilessly, daring Death to take her, get it over with.  
 
She gave herself a cut off date. When she must decide to live or die. And if to live, how? Hide herself away, her body’s imperfections a stumbling block, a slap in the face? Or flaunt her scars like trophies? Own the tragedy? These were the hard choices. Take it or leave it?
 
My noticeable limp when I walk away from it all. 

Alexis Rhone Fancher 

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Verse Daily, The American Journal of Poetry, Plume, Diode, Slipstream, and elsewhere. Her eleven poetry collections include Erotic: New & Selected, and Brazen (NYQ Books); Duets (Small Harbor Press), an ekphrastic chapbook with Cynthia Atkins, and Triggered, a “pillow book” (MacQueen’s). Coming soon:  CockSure, a full-length erotic book, from Moon Tide Press, SinkHole, from MacQueen’s Press, and a book of portraits of over 100 Southern California Poets at Moon Tide Press A multiple Best of the Net and  Pushcart nominee, Alexis recently won BestMicroFiction 2025. Find her at www.alexisrhonefancher.com