Justine AkbariPoetry Contributor
Kimberly Wolkens
Sarah had been sick with the flu for what seemed like forever. It was really only for two whole days so far, but to a six-year-old, it felt like an eternity. She’d missed yesterday’s Halloween party at school because of her illness, which added insult to injury. Her mother tried to console her by saying there will be several more Halloween parties in her lifetime, but that did nothing to smooth out the ripples of disappointment for poor Sarah.
On the second day, she lay in her mother’s bed, cross at the world. She was mad that she couldn’t go to school. She was mad that she couldn’t go outside and play with her siblings when they got home from school. But what made her the maddest was being confined to bed, ordered to rest, told to stay under the covers. It was boring. Even though her mother did her best to bring her books or games or stuffed animals in between household chores, Sarah just didn’t feel like doing anything. Nothing pleased her.
For a while she occupied her mind by studying her mother’s beautiful quilt. The quilt had no two squares alike. She would look at all of the fabric patterns and debate over which pattern was her favorite. She settled on a square with a baby blue background that was dotted with tiny birds, wings out in flight. She wished she were like one of those birds, just floating through a cloudless sky. Eventually the quilt became boring to her, and she tossed it aside in frustration, only to be reminded minutes later by her mother to put the quilt back on so that she wouldn’t get the chills.
She was miserable.
One time when her mom came in to take her temperature, Sarah complained bitterly about being trapped in bed.
“Mama, I wish I could get out of bed. I wish I could fly, like these birds,” Sarah said, pointing to her favorite square.
Her Mama leaned over to study Sarah’s favorite square. “Ah, yes. That square came from a dress your grandma used to wear when she was young. It is very beautiful.” She put her hand on Sarah’s forehead. Her hand felt cool against Sarah’s hot forehead. “You’re not as feverish, but you need to stay in bed a while longer, so that you feel better sooner.”
“Aw, man!” Sarah said. “But wouldn’t it be neat to fly?”
Her Mama paused for a second, and looked up to the ceiling in thought. “Hmm…” was all she said.
That piqued Sarah’s interest. “What, Mama?” She watched as her mother re-tucked the quilt around her then stand up.
“I think I have an idea. I’ll be right back!” Mama’s long brown hair swished behind her as she rushed out of the room with a mysterious smile on her face.
Sarah was so curious about what Mama had up her sleeve that she forgot she was sick. She fiddled with the ears of her stuffed bunny named Baby. She heard her Mama walk to the kitchen and open the junk drawer where they kept markers, loose change and other odds and ends. Then she heard the door to the basement open, then close a few minutes after that. Soon her Mama returned with a permanent marker in one hand and a bright pink ball in the other.
“What are you doing, Mama?” Sarah asked.
“You were talking about flying and wishes, and it reminded me of something. One time I was stuck home sick, just like you. It was right around my birthday and I was miserable. Your grandmother made me feel better by drawing me onto a toy and took me outside, to experience the outside through the toy.”
Sarah wasn’t sure if she was being tricked, or if she should believe Mama. “Really? How?” she asked.
“I don’t know how it worked, sweetie. But she did this,” Mama said, and uncapped the marker. She drew a stick figure of a little girl with curly hair, a triangle dress, cute little eyes and a happy smile.
“Is that me?” Sarah asked.
“Yes, I think it looks like you! This is how you look when you feel well enough to play outside.”
“Now what?”
“Well,” Mama said, standing up. “First let’s open your curtains so that you can see outside. Then if you watch, I’m going to stand right outside your window, and toss this ball into the air. The Sarah on this ball will be flying, and maybe….just maybe…you’ll feel like you are flying, too!”
A smile slowly crept across Sarah’s face. She thought it sounded too good to be true. But she almost always believed what Mama told her, so she decided she would believe her this time, too.
Mama walked out of the room toward the back door. Sarah heard her slip on a jacket, then open and close the door. Seconds later, her Mama stood in front of the window. She looked in at Sarah and waved. Sarah smiled and waved back. Mama held the beautiful pink ball so that drawn Sarah was beaming back at real Sarah.
Mama bent her knees to get lower to the ground, then she sprung up and tossed the ball so very high into the air. Sarah closed her eyes and couldn’t believe what happened.
Now Sarah was flying, too! She felt her stomach flip-flop as she spun upward. She saw her blonde curls bounce carelessly around her shoulders. She looked down at the elegant pink dress floating lazily around her legs. She laughed as she watched the window of her parents’ bedroom get smaller and smaller. Sarah flung her arms out wide, pretending to be like the little birds on the quilt. All too soon, she reached the top of the ascent and lazily rolled down toward the ground. She watched as her Mama’s figure grew larger and larger, her outstretched hands ready to catch her.
Mama caught her as gently as she could, and with a squeal of delight from Sarah, bent toward the ground again before springing up to send Sarah into flight. Once again Sarah watched the house and the trees get smaller and smaller. She held her arms out and felt the air around her caress her skin. It was the most beautiful moment, being suspended in air, seeing the fiery autumn trees paint the ground in reds, golds and browns. She felt light and happy and excited. She saw a great big world out there, and she wished she could look at the whole thing from her place in the air.
But eventually, it was her turn to come back home. She felt herself falling toward the ground, her belly tickling as she came down…down…down. Again her Mama caught her. Mama held her up so that the real Sarah would see her.
The real Sarah opened her eyes, and was once again snuggled underneath a quilt in her parents’ bed. Sarah smiled the biggest smile she’d ever had. Her Mama waved once more; Sarah returned the wave.
Sarah looked down at her favorite quilt square and lovingly caressed it. Her mother came back inside, hung up her jacket and came to the bedroom doorway.
“So…how was it?” Mama asked with a grin.
“I felt like I was really flying!” Sarah said happily. “But…how did you…how did I…?” Sarah’s head spun in circles as she tried to figure out how something so magical could feel so real.
Mama simply smiled and said, “I don’t know how it works, exactly. But Grandma always said that a Mother’s love can make anything happen.” Mama came in and gave the pink ball to Sarah. Sarah snuggled even further under the quilt, placing the ball so that she could see the other Sarah, Flying Sarah, as she drifted off into a soft slumber where she dreamed about flying over the neighborhood and to beautiful places unseen.
Ray Ball
The past couple of weeks my work as a historian of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish empire has taken me from my home in Anchorage, Alaska to Palermo in Sicily. I’m here conducting archival research for a book about a duke and duchess. They were Spanish nobles, but they lived for most of the 1610s in what historians often refer to as Spanish Italy. I spend seven to eight hours a day in a former convent sifting through manuscripts and trying to piece together the patronage and information networks that this elite couple created in order to benefit the crown and themselves.
This is my first time in Palermo. It’s an enchanting city. Some might call it scruffy or in disrepair, but it has charmed me with its layers of architectural styles, its hundreds of churches – some lavish and others sparse, its narrow cobblestone streets, and its delicious food. My problem is not with the way traffic darts aggressively or the street life that carries what the Sicilians call la vucciria up to my window at night. It’s with my own ability to talk. I’m essentially fluent in Spanish and can read Italian fairly well, but my speaking is wretched. I want my words to soar. Instead, they trip off my tongue. I wonder if the stone lions that adorn the Teatro Massimo hear me mangle words. Their stone visages show no sign.
The first few days about half the people I speak to assume that I am Spanish and the rest think I’m an English speaker. The past week, that ratio has shifted so that almost everyone now concludes I’m American after I’ve spoken a few words. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse about my language abilities. On the one hand, it might mean my grasp of certain words and phrases has improved and now I’m not lapsing into the more familiar tones and cadences of Castilian. On the other hand, there is something disappointing about their responses that I can’t quite put my finger on. Most people have been very nice. I try to take comfort in that I’m probably doing better than many foreigners. Maybe not the Dutch, but certainly better than most Americans. Yet, because I’m not here as a tourist but rather as a historian, I feel a pressure to be able to speak better than I do.
At the archives where I consult seventeenth-century tomes, the staff has kindly put up with my pidgin mix of Italian, accidental Spanish, and hand gestures. One day I am ill and can hardly manage to speak at all, but one of the archivists graciously offers to pack up my documents and reseal them with the complicated tying methods used in many European archives. I almost cry because of this kindness.
In spite of this graciousness or perhaps because of it, I wish I could articulate my thanks with greater sophistication. Since I was a child, I have considered Italian to be a beautiful language. The language of the operas my father loved. In fact, when I was in college, I took a semester of it. But the professor was so rude that it was a miserable class. You’ve probably heard of hate fucking? Well, I hate earned an A in that class. And after the climax, I swore I would never see the Sicilian woman who taught it ever again. I went on to take three semesters of German, which has since nearly completely atrophied due to lack of use.
Looking back, I’m not sure my instructor was all that mean. Demanding, sure. Rigid, yes. Still, with that perfect clarity that hindsight offers, I wish I had stuck with it and taken at least another semester. Maybe then I would be able to correctly conjugate some verbs in the past tense. Even as I think this, I know I wasn’t predisposed to the kind of emotional growth learning a foreign language demands. As you remake your vocabulary, a new you emerges. In the fall of 1999 I wasn’t capable of it. I was stuck in a quagmire of grief and depression. I wasn’t ready to claw myself out yet either.
My father had passed suddenly and unexpectedly away the previous winter. My mother had just started on a road to recovery from substance abuse. My sister and I barely knew how to communicate. I was devastated and pretending to hold it all together. No, I was far too vulnerable to be vulnerable, and that is what learning a language requires. It demands discipline but also a willingness to make mistakes. To make space for the embarrassment of when you accidentally utter something vulgar instead of simply saying “I am going for a run.” Back then I feared a single mistake would cause me to unspool.
Now I am making lots of mistakes. Even though I know the word in Italian, I can only think of the Spanish word for driving while I’m speaking to a taxi driver. I mix up tenses and use words that are outdated because I’ve been reading seventeenth-century letters, contracts, petitions, and wills all day long. My mouth struggles to mimic the accented vowels and rhythmic deliverance of the locals. But with each mistake I somehow feel lighter, less burdened. And there is progress, too. While standing awestruck before the glittering mosaics of Monreale, I understand almost everything a tour guide is saying in Italian. I manage to converse with a couple from Milan for the better part of an hour before my brain shatters. One evening another of the archivists and I go out for drink. We take turns speaking in Italian and English. His English is far better than my Italian, but I try not to mind. The next day I watch birds taking off from the domes of the churches and later look up the words for pigeon, raven, seagull, and dove. Falcon, I already know.
At night I dream vivid dreams of participating in a triathlon with only a bathing suit, or heading to the starting line of a marathon I haven’t trained for, or realizing I need to be at the airport while my clothes are in the washer at the laundry mat. Not very subtle. But then I also dream about being the recipient of a gift of silk from a noble or about conversing with friends in Spanish with a few Italian words mixed in. I wake smiling.
Arlene Antoinette
The dragon in me dreams of flight,
needs to jump off cliffs with wings
spread wide, feel the rushing air
blowing up from beneath me, feel
the warmth of the sun on my face.
The wind becomes a part of me. My
subconscious guru, whispering words
of strength: take flight brave one, it
says. This is who you were meant
to be. Don’t allow your humanness
to anchor you to the earth. Don’t
wait for it to clip your wings. You
were born for the sky!
I soar higher and higher, expanding
my chest as I draw in air and breathe
out fire. I am no longer earth bound,
I am in flight.
Tiffany MotonPoetry Contributor
Erin MoranNonfiction Contributor
Shawn McClure
After we gave up our animals, my mother took me to visit Sassafras at his new home. He shared a pasture with a clique of ponies that all looked the same. They picked up their heads to watch us through their manes as we entered the gate. I felt sorry that my pony grazed apart from the group, but it also seemed like he knew how much more beautiful he was than the others. He snorted his little greeting in recognition of me as I approached. The others went back to their grass, and I pet his soft nose, talked to him a while, and said goodbye.
In the road trips that followed, I moped in the back seat of the car. To escape chatter between my sisters, I projected my mind to the side of the road where I rode an invisible pony. We galloped through the roadside weeds, keeping even with the car. We leapt mailboxes, and rested at stop lights.
Sometimes I never came home from these runs. My body went to bed, but my mind still covered impossible distances, leapt creeks, and galloped through tangled fields. We found a little place in the woods where the dusk rolled in and collected in a hollow. In that tidepool of night, I curled up on the moss, and rested in his radiant light.
*
The Pineal door exists, and I can go through it.
I visualize myself not as flesh or cells, but as bricks of empty space, electrons that hurtle around a nucleus, locked in orbit like wild ponies that never tire, never wander.
I keep still. I watch the dappled shade respond to the push and pull of a breeze. I watch my edges melt into my surroundings. My extremities soften, my boundaries smudge like charcoal. Some of my electrons escape their orbit to live in the summer air. My mind follows and hovers there, watching my body from above.
I go back to a time and place that still exists for those of us who know where to look. I fly, but I feel the invisible tether, a nagging pull that wants to draw me back to my body. I resist. I move through the perpetual dusk, knowing my way, landing as a ghost. On the way to the field, I pause to pet Atlas the steer. I smell his sweet haybreath as I reach for his white forehead star. Fatcat rubs his jowels on the fence and purrs. Another day, I’ll visit only him.
Sassafras knows I’m here. He snorts as always, stomps for attention, eager to run.
I can stretch my tether to any place I long to be. Sometimes I go down to the pond and watch the blue heron, immobile as he hunts. Other times, I squeeze up between the ceiling and the hay bales to find Fatcat. He’s a soft tuxedo of fur, purring against my face, warming the eternal twilight. Most often, I project myself to the pasture. I squeeze through the fence rails, push through the overgrown clover, and scan the shadows for my strawberry roan. I find Sassafras sleeping in the weeds. I enter his dream and we go. When he leaps, it feels just like flying.
Steve Bucher
Bring back to me
The subtle lift
Of childhood toes
Giving way the ground
Buoyed by hands unseen
Ring me with echoes
Of birds once heard
In wooded note
So long ago
Leave lasting
Each edged embrace
Of heart held home
Grown at last too small
Let me nest
Feathered by all
I have let go
That I might wing
At winter’s end
Set loose
By hands unseen
