Autobiography of a Violin | Cassie Burkhardt
When I lift the instrument out of its case
to show my daughter,
unearthing it, as if from a dig–
what I feel in my hands
is not so much a violin
as a person—
a girl I kept shut away in a case
for twenty-five years,
slender wooden neck that barely weighs a thing,
angular, hollowed-out body of thirteen-year-old me—
anorexic, with monstrous braces
enough inner violence to snap a bow in half over her head.
Spent eighth grade in a treatment center
wanted to disappear, got so close she almost did.
I lift her up, curve my hand around her scroll
and she fits inside me still.
Read by the Author:
Cassie’s Poem was selected as the 2025 Honeybee Prize winner in Poetry by Julia Kolchinsky. Julia had this to say about the poem…
“I was instantly struck by the control within each of the couplets and then taken by the central metaphor of the violin. While recollecting a traumatic past in its narrative, the poems lyric arc is one of tenderness–self love and acceptance not wholly arrived at but reached for, the way a bow against strings makes music. And once the melody ends, I just wanted to reread the poem again to keep listening to its music.”
about the author:
Cassie is a poet based outside Philadelphia. She struggled with anorexia as a child is now fully recovered. Her chapbook Dear Boobs is available with Bottlecap Press. She lives in Gladwyne, PA with her husband and three kids. Read more of her poems and stories in Rattle, New Ohio Review, Cagibi, Philadelphia Stories and other journals. She studies at the Writers Studio, based in NYC.