Author: Cassandra Smith

Cassandra Smith is a visual artist and poet. She lives in Oakland.

this is a story of a unicorn named uni, spelled u&i

with which memories do you feel most often afraid?

u&i didn’t often rationalize before a thought was formed. if, upon an inquiry,
there was a general excitement about a subject, u&i would insist on talking very
excitedly about the nothing it seemed to surround. this nothing was always filled
to the most incremental of means, but could never be understood if an outsider
tried to rationalize. this would often begin as a small plague in the brain for each
party, of thoughts that couldn’t be re-formed into something else. this was
thought to suit u&i just fine, a happiness borne from every rounded design.

u&i would often dream of moving to the country, where an abandoned house
would be retrieved from a certain shade of the overgrown, and objects that have
been collected over the years would be mixed in with objects that had collected
over the years and many rusty things would stay where found or be placed where
others could not be. it was a complicated dream, this house in a clearing. a clutter
would surround each of any moment. u&i would argue sometimes that there was
not much difference between moving to find an abandoned house of accumulated
matter, and moving somewhere that had not been abandoned and where one
could find nothing of immediate accumulation. and also not moving at all. u&i
did not often feel regret but when this thought would find its way into occurrence
there was always a sturdy and lingering gloom.

is it a city or a country or is it only alone. u&i would ask but there was no another
near.

u&i on the matter of forests

the myth of walking was never put to any accuracy. as a genuine when we would
stray we were always aware of certain treading, a softening of occurring but there
are things when one walks that cannot be undone. as we, we believe this is the
beginning of chivalry: the unicorn of gentlemen.

how one might roam. how two might meander.

u&i: a part

u&i began an inner monologue of what might happen were one divided
multilaterally. this made u&i laugh, what sound a multilatter might make. but
then with how broken (destroying) the sound must be.

u&i began in a forest and u&i ended in a wood. we would
like to separate ourselves for a moment and tell you a
story:

u&i began in a forest or u&i ended in a wood. we would sit together and find the
best of things and hold them closely. this holding & closely took an entire lifetime
so we conspired together to change a natural occurrence of ending and death and,
being as how we started as two-and-not-one, we took that second part of our
lifetimes and in our forest and in our wood we held this very closely. our act of
living still while also again didn’t bother us because in this part of the story, only
we knew that there was an us to distinguish.

u&i were not he nor she nor we but something different. a
singular of sincere.

u&i would try not to lie about where things began or how they were invented but
the hardest part was figuring the simple logic of one or two. u&i would like to be
one made of two or two into something very large but sometimes it is very hard to
be constantly convinced. u&i could feel one body against another body and
something would always threaten to fracture.