Before I took the leap of faith, I looked up at the clouds. I had grown obsessed with the unsolved mysteries of my own world. I’d rather sit in the shade and ask the ladybugs about how to love. To look into the sea of blue above and name the funny looking pockets of fluff. Observing as the two dragonflies circled one another just so they could part again. It wasn’t nature itself but the tiny details that make up its ecosystem that thrilled my senses and turned even the most natural of occurrences into a spectacle of life. I’ve always wondered who dreamt us up. Who decided to make caterpillars into butterflies and why there are so many flies. 

Every night the spider spins its silk, remembering the tales of today by circling its tomorrow’s. People are scared of spiders but the webs they weave are vortexes for memories, the spider works all evening then rests with its head turned to the ground. Circulating the blood. Life always seems to come so naturally for nature. Every earthly creature knows what to do but the entire human species. Like clockwork the ants come marching in and out, building a volcano out of pebbles of dirt so that a system for keeping them alive can be instated. 

After see every detail of art and science surrounding me, I look forward and see what the humans are up to. With the sun beaming down, throwing punches in the air. Pull-ups at the park. A dog runs loose. Lovers sit on a blanket under a tree. A mixed group of men shooting hoops. Parents at the fences, young kids at the pitcher mound. Screams, laughter and squeals echoing through the borderless hallways of sidewalk passageways. A young black girl tells me she likes my hair. An older man asks if he can paint my portrait to sell for money. I tell him maybe tomorrow. 

Everything I’ve ever dreamt up, circles around me like paper planes that only I can see. Messages from my past fly in, flimsy and white like they’re mocking the way the clouds work. There is magic being boiled inside me with nowhere to put. Paper cuts line my stomach now, I want to throw up but know that I can’t. Not now, not while everyone is looking.

I was only a little girl when I first started to be watched. 4 feet tall with hands pointed at my eyes, reaching to squeeze my cheeks. I grew paranoid of having my face be touched. I didn’t ask to be gleamed at. I didn’t know what happens to pretty girls back then but I sensed it. I was watching the watchers. Taking mental notes about how they moved and marvelled at me. I learned that keep tracking of the peripherals was more than just a wide landscape, it was a key to survival. 

I thought I stumbled upon the hole in the ground but I could feel the air telling me where to go. I had lost all signal and service, the sky was my only compass. I hadn’t felt this alone since I was the only egg made into a baby. There was no choice but to go back into the black hole. I was too big for the land. I outgrew what I knew. The only place that would take me was to infinity and beyond. It was enough to see the caterpillars, I had to hear what wisdom they knew. The flowers needed to sing. The bees couldn’t just sting. The ants had to show us how to dance.

It was time for my mind to run free.
Uncontrollable imagination.
Passing time with hopscotch and rainbow chalk.
The birthing place for a child’s heart.





Wishing.

The well where I could just be me. 

World flips.

Tilt shifts.

Darkness carved out of the dirt.