fan art by Dane Georges (http://thedanetrain.deviantart.com/)
AUSTIN HENDRICKS
Measurements of Falling Women
In 1973, Gwen Stacy falls for the first time.
In the decades after, the question that follows her
like a miasma is not about the disposability of women
or death as an overused Spiderman plot point,
but rather:
how did she die?
Was it the fall –
the air rushing past her face
its palm pushing against her throat
-‐or the whiplash as she hits Spiderman’s web?
Peter Parker, despite being uniquely qualified
to hear her last breath, doesn’t know.
The year I’m in seventh grade,
my sister is living at home for the first time
I can clearly remember. She’s pregnant,
but mostly she’s here to make brownies
and peach cobbler that we eat while we watch
What Not to Wear. In the afternoons, I memorize
Teen Titans and X-‐Men and Static Shock
and draw pictures. When she was my age,
she watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer and drew pictures.
When she looks at my drawings,
she says they look like the way mine used to.
I look more like her than I look like my twin brother.
Drug addiction is a little like the way
the Green Goblin spends night after night
planning robberies that are doomed to fail,
a series of attacks that do damage with no real reward.
Does he know he cannot win?
Can he tell the difference between the faces he sees in the mirror?
Did I miss the issue in which his son asks him to stop?
When I talk about my sister, I can’t tell whether
victim or villain is the more appropriate metaphor,
but I’ve never known which one my sister is.
This is the curse of addiction.
I’ve spent so much time trying to pinpoint
where the difference lives,
but heroes and villains have the same origin story
until the moment after they pull on the mask.
The nature of superpower is the ability to win
when the odds are against you.
Peter Parker does not ask how she died
as he holds her body.
He already knows he has failed.
This is because he is the only one
who could’ve saved this girl who cannot be saved.
The wind and the web are irrelevant.
She never should’ve been in this kind of danger.
I grew up with Mary Jane.
The idea of failure never hits me
until the following summer,
when my sister moves away
and never quite comes home.
Children are so used to their mistakes
bleeding openly on their arms
that it never occurs to them this is something
they should grow out of.
This is not an origin story.
It is a measurement of space.
On the left: who my sister is, falling.
On the right: myself, watching the person
I thought my sister was
do something I interpreted as moving closer.
In the center: a web of loss rendered in four colors,
catching
my sister’s voice on the phone,
saying she might come home for Christmas this year.
In the background: the trailer for the new Spiderman
movie plays. Gwen’s hand stretches for mine.
She still falls.
Austin Hendricks is an undergraduate student at Northeastern University, where she studies chemistry and minors in the art of herding poets. She spends most of her day carefully moving small amounts of liquid into different small containers in the hope that this will help humanity reach enlightenment. Sometimes she cries while watching superhero movies. FreezeRay is her first publication!
In 1973, Gwen Stacy falls for the first time.
In the decades after, the question that follows her
like a miasma is not about the disposability of women
or death as an overused Spiderman plot point,
but rather:
how did she die?
Was it the fall –
the air rushing past her face
its palm pushing against her throat
-‐or the whiplash as she hits Spiderman’s web?
Peter Parker, despite being uniquely qualified
to hear her last breath, doesn’t know.
The year I’m in seventh grade,
my sister is living at home for the first time
I can clearly remember. She’s pregnant,
but mostly she’s here to make brownies
and peach cobbler that we eat while we watch
What Not to Wear. In the afternoons, I memorize
Teen Titans and X-‐Men and Static Shock
and draw pictures. When she was my age,
she watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer and drew pictures.
When she looks at my drawings,
she says they look like the way mine used to.
I look more like her than I look like my twin brother.
Drug addiction is a little like the way
the Green Goblin spends night after night
planning robberies that are doomed to fail,
a series of attacks that do damage with no real reward.
Does he know he cannot win?
Can he tell the difference between the faces he sees in the mirror?
Did I miss the issue in which his son asks him to stop?
When I talk about my sister, I can’t tell whether
victim or villain is the more appropriate metaphor,
but I’ve never known which one my sister is.
This is the curse of addiction.
I’ve spent so much time trying to pinpoint
where the difference lives,
but heroes and villains have the same origin story
until the moment after they pull on the mask.
The nature of superpower is the ability to win
when the odds are against you.
Peter Parker does not ask how she died
as he holds her body.
He already knows he has failed.
This is because he is the only one
who could’ve saved this girl who cannot be saved.
The wind and the web are irrelevant.
She never should’ve been in this kind of danger.
I grew up with Mary Jane.
The idea of failure never hits me
until the following summer,
when my sister moves away
and never quite comes home.
Children are so used to their mistakes
bleeding openly on their arms
that it never occurs to them this is something
they should grow out of.
This is not an origin story.
It is a measurement of space.
On the left: who my sister is, falling.
On the right: myself, watching the person
I thought my sister was
do something I interpreted as moving closer.
In the center: a web of loss rendered in four colors,
catching
my sister’s voice on the phone,
saying she might come home for Christmas this year.
In the background: the trailer for the new Spiderman
movie plays. Gwen’s hand stretches for mine.
She still falls.
Austin Hendricks is an undergraduate student at Northeastern University, where she studies chemistry and minors in the art of herding poets. She spends most of her day carefully moving small amounts of liquid into different small containers in the hope that this will help humanity reach enlightenment. Sometimes she cries while watching superhero movies. FreezeRay is her first publication!
