As a child, two things seemed realer than anything she experienced later:
1. Her life was a book.
2. She could fly.

These were such compelling realities that she never stopped to think maybe they weren’t real at all. She became real in her dreams that she didn’t know were dreams. And when she noticed they were dreams, she couldn’t fly any more. She tried too hard after that, jumping off couches and constructing wings.

In her dreams, she never flew with wings on because wings were more than human and flying was more human than walking or talking and or other such modern contrivances.

Flying was human like breathing, like drowning.
There was nothing to believe in, and no beliefs to suspend. There was only looking up at things and wishing to be with them, and then floating above them, above the heads of bewildered parents. She could bypass blades of ceiling fans and ceilings altogether- beams and shingles so much less substantial than she. She developed a faithful kind of fear of flying. Of never knowing how high she would go, or how she would get back, but feeling that the sky itself was holding her steady, ready, unafraid, to fall. It was the fear that rendered her humble-enough, human-enough to fly. It was the fear she felt when she was about to climb a tree, fear she could always successfully, though never entirely, ignore, or diminish, or forget.

Adults would always forget she could fly, as she would grow frustrated and bewildered and sad. She’d patiently sit them down and rise above their heads, grace on her face, in the face of their frown. “You can fly,” they’d admit, shielding their eyes from the rising sun, as she rose, satisfied, and shamefully aware that they were chained to the earth by suspicion.

It was a shame they’d forget her flight so soon.

She flew every night as a child, though it seemed like everyday, and everyday, they forgot she could fly.

Adults couldn’t remember what they didn’t want to believe in.

There was little, in her life, that she forgot. In adolescence, she could still remember wrestling with sleep in rocking chairs and warm white arms. She could still remember humiliating things that were meant to go unnoticed: the way, when her car seat tilted sideways, and the car lilted back, and the steering wheel tilted all wrong, her mother forgot everything she knew. She looked down because she forgot her hands, and looked back to remember her daughter.

Sometimes the girl was once removed from her memories; she could only remember remembering. And she’d think that if she could just remember enough moments in which she remembered other moments, she could remember her entire life; she wanted to remember being born, this way. She had always hoped to remember being born.

Labels: By Ana