Three Secrets-Three Fragments of Yesterday

Truth:  When I was seven, I wanted to be an astronaut like some girls want to be a faerie, because I believed then I could give the sky an ultimatum. Sink it's carousel gravity to my phantom limbs, or I'd slow dance my way towards its comets.


            I believed that if I found my way up to the sky, I could find all the people who had gone missing while I was building faerie houses in my treehouse.
          Then, I learned that rocket ships were really talented illusionists tracing the constellations like carnival fortune tellers, just because they made it halfway to heaven, they were still capable of disapearing into black holes.

      I learned about Apollo 13 and fires that belief in fairytales couldn't put out, and ways your body could spin that could pacify your lungs desire to pump oxygen.



    I told Bunny with stray paws what I learned, but she ran away & and mom told me raccoons took her.

    I couldn't help thinking, well, that's one way to get to the sky.



        For the first time in my life, I was sad I kept asking questions, learning about cardboard wings,and dreams whose fringe benefit were as counterfeit as the idea that people could live in the sky .
          Then I regretted not being a follower of 'ignorance is bliss', and wished I had raveled the concept into my context of religion.
           
      But knowing when to stop is a delicacy, indignant painted seven year old lips, hadn't learned to retain.




Truth: When I was eight, I found a ladybug between the incoming tide and the sand dunes and named her providence.  I called the sand dunes 'buttermilk pillows, and named the way psychedelic dominoes returned the victim's of winter storms to shore,
'aestival'.

    I played hide and seek with the way geometric tides scattered spray all around where the staircase I was standing on met the lapping of its water. The underbelly of a fallen star lay cuddled in my palm, it's red and black spots a testimony to the idea that no matter how small  you feel, someone could still save you.

              I believed in the end of the world, and that year I saw the beauty in indigo waves corroding the periwinkle sky, the way lightening streaked its way to driftwood on the beach.  I fell in love with Winter that day, even though in the years to come it would force me to fight for myself while trapped besides car window seats.

          My whole history was wrapped up in this beach, and it couldn't be more ephemeral if the architect directing lightening, had designed it that way.

          I jumped from step to step after putting my fallen star on honey suckle leaves on the other side of the sea. I'd stand on the wet sand beneath the lowest plywood creak, with my nail beds splintering themselves on the railings.

              When the ocean came close, I'd race back up shrieking- believing that I was invincible, and mesmerized by the way it could eat away the beach as if six hundred feet of sand in August, had never existed.

    Ever since then, between Christmas and the beginning of the new year I'd go stand at the edge, and watch the clouds roll in the storms. Every time I caught sky tears in my palms, second best to ladybugs and fallen stars- I knew summer was over and it would be months till it came back.

                I made no sense, I called the sand there to protect the buildings from Winter , pillows and the height of December words that meant Summer.




Truth: I was nine, and Mary Poppins would have fed me medicine for being a cheater.
I dodged autumnal water straight from celery green snakes, to the spigot and turn it off even as they doused me with buckets and uptown orange handles filled with ice cubes.

When we had water fights I always convinced everyone that my capacity to break the rules was an urban legend, and that they were abominable to accuse me of stealing water guns, and turning off hoses.

      I told them the teams were isometric, and they had no reason to complain, and then I'd 'forget' I had my own hose to refill, and then I remembered again when I got to theirs.

            So I turned it off. I didn't want to waste water.





            Sometimes
      Truth: Until I turned ten, I never used spell check for my letters to Santa, or God for that matter.

      Maybe that's why they never had a reason to reply.

      Mom used to tell me they were just busy, but that's about as true as it is that she was crying because of the onions.

Sometimes I wish people would just tell me the truth.
           
            I learned to be solipsistic, after I wrote to Mary and said I was sorry for making Mom cry, and she wouldn't make her happy again.


              I think wishes do come true.

            I prefer to believe, mythical beings up in the sky, just don't believe in me.

        NOT, the other way around.