And when the universe runs itself into the ground and the music fades, when nothing remains but memories floating without minds to reside in and no medium by which to exist, then perhaps all the unsaid things and all the trammeled feelings will have leave for release and will mingle and console one another... when we are all gone.
She would never know how it began, because, in reality, when do these things ever begin? Was it set in motion at the dawn of time, something fated that needed only time to occur? Was it the product of a unique set of probabilities, where the change of a single one would have meant something entirely different? Did it matter?
Say, now that you mention it... not really.
She'd been forced to hide herself, to squeeze and contort herself into a tiny form they'd contrived for her. Not too fast, not too slow. Shoulders back, smaller steps, never laugh, never smile. Or, study, read, sleep, eat, don't look out the window, for god's sake, keep your feet on the ground. Be a lady, be a scientist, be a doctor, but be something we can contain in a single word. If it wasn't in the dictionary, it was extraneous.
She never could contain herself in a box, or a ball, or a pentagram. Her tongue said to sing, to shape and chase each phrase, each sigh, to coax an instant of beauty out of each and every word. Her eyes said to fly, to spread her wings and watch the word fall away, to be at home among white spires and mountains in the sky. Her hands and eyes, befriending one another, said to draw, to paint, to shape, to revel in the feeling of sharpies on skin, the soft curve of a cheek, the shadows and folds of cloth, the satisfaction of capturing it all on paper, or for that matter, in clay. Her mind said to die, to follow the questions of the universe into the infinity of the unknown. How could she contain it all? How could she be a single word, some tiny, simplistic thing?
They tried again and again to push her into a box, but each time, she couldn't help but float up again, passively, because it was her nature. She wanted to lie still, sometimes, to curl up into that box so they would love her, to be what they wanted.
Her heart said to feel, to dream, to be. To take all that she was, to breathe life into it, to chase each concept further up and out, to take a flower and paint a forest, to take a cup of liquid and toss it into the air and watch it splay across the sky, to chase bubbles, to build blanket forts, to run through sprinklers and roll through grass and laugh. To giggle, to scream, to cry, to know everything the books said in person, in reality.
He was the first. The first to capture all those loose billows of being, all the yards and yards and miles of swirling, lighter-than-air filaments, the broader sheets, the thinnest threads... and rather than stuff them in a box, to set them free again, with a breathe of air to coax them up again. He set her free, yanked out the pins that had held her.
At first, she was terrified. She'd never known such lightness, never felt herself without the dead weight of chains, never quiet managed to flip the tips of her train out beyond the edges of her box. She curled back, at first, unsure. The conflict had her in tangles, in knots, crying in frustration because she had run so many loops back and forth within herself that she could not get free.
He coaxed the knots apart, soothed her, cast her into the air again like a shimmering, swirling kite. And when she gave up her panicked screaming and scrambling and thrashing, when she floated easily on the air, enjoying the sensation of her entire life throbbing through her, expanding her as far as she wanted to go... when she sighed in contentment, he launched up after her.
He was all the boundless life and freedom of the wind, barely contained in an earthly form. He filled the empty spaces, breathed life into the spaces where the air had been squeezed out by the box, left far behind on the ground. He spun her 'round, tossed her higher than she could leap on her own, told her to fly further, to breathe deeper, to cry harder... and to love, to love like she'd never loved before.
No comments:
Post a Comment