Listen to the voiceover to hear my process for developing this story using AI.
Being named would bestow upon me an air of consequence that I didn't rightly possess. I was just a girl with hair so black it looked like it'd been dipped in the night sky, falling uneven over the left side of my face.
I stood, unremarkable, in the train station, all a-bustle with folk just like me, each one a tangle of untold stories.
I was no Theotokos, no Mary Magdalene. Just another plain woman, shuffling toward a blurry horizon.
We were all waiting, bound by a thick air of apprehension, yet humming with a dogged spark of hope. The train would be our refuge, our ticket out of this broiling mess.
You could see the silent sufferings of my people marked out plain as day on their hollow faces. Each shard a shattered crucifix.
I held my ticket tightly — a tired, wrinkled thing. Its fading letters seemingly slipping through my fingers, as I cast my gaze down the tracks, praying with the simple earnestness of a peasant.
A faint, far-off horn sounded. And then it all went to hell.
A bright flash, a deafening roar, and the world was spinning. I found myself sprawled out on the stone, the echo of the blast still singing in my ears. Everything was twisted, bent out of shape, the once teeming station turned into a hellish pit.
I laid in the wreckage, just a girl with long black hair, a silent witness. No saint, no angel, just another girl with nothing left to see.
Adapted from an earlier poem.