Viola Flashcards
I want to feel everything, just as it is now.
This warmth
Look at the way their little feet kick up to the sky.
I remember thinking that if I swung hard enough, I could touch the sun.
But then gravity would pull you back and the chain links would pinch your skin
The smell of rusted metal, dirt and gravel on your knees when you had to jump off at the sound of a whistle.
For a moment, it felt like flying
Third grade was when I learned that the sun is dying, that it would one day explode.
That even now, we are hurtling through space around the dying sun at 60… what is it 67000 miles per hour
So fast…always moving
It seems precarious. Incomprehensible. It seems.. impossible.
I raised why hand so fast and asked Mrs.Cherry, “and what will happen to us?”
She gave a thoughtful little pause and said,”there won’t be an us, there won’t be a you, there won’t be a me.” She said much quieter, “but there’s now. None of us live forever”
What kind of kid would hear that though?
There’s no forever? One day this will all be gone? Me? Gone?
I couldn’t sleep for weeks. I kept waking up in a cold sweat.
I think about that a lot. After that I was always moving forward in time.
What’s next, what’s next. At breakfast, what’s for lunch. At lunch, what’s for dinner. Then it grew larger and larger.
What about next week, next month, next year, 5 years from now, 10 years from now?
Then..the insomnia. If I fall asleep, will I wake up?
What if I do everything exactly right, always staying ahead, just to find out that it was all wrong?
The worry, always the worry, that’s what fills my days. The next thing and the next. And now. It’s now.
