Viola

Answer 1

I want to feel everything, just as it is now.

Answer 2

This warmth

Answer 3

Look at the way their little feet kick up to the sky.

Answer 4

I remember thinking that if I swung hard enough, I could touch the sun.

Answer 5

But then gravity would pull you back and the chain links would pinch your skin

Answer 6

The smell of rusted metal, dirt and gravel on your knees when you had to jump off at the sound of a whistle.

Answer 7

For a moment, it felt like flying

Answer 8

Third grade was when I learned that the sun is dying, that it would one day explode.

Answer 9

That even now, we are hurtling through space around the dying sun at 60… what is it 67000 miles per hour

Answer 10

So fast…always moving

Answer 11

It seems precarious. Incomprehensible. It seems.. impossible.

Answer 12

I raised why hand so fast and asked Mrs.Cherry, “and what will happen to us?”

Answer 13

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”

Answer 14

What kind of kid would hear that though?

Answer 15

There’s no forever? One day this will all be gone? Me? Gone?

Answer 16

I couldn’t sleep for weeks. I kept waking up in a cold sweat.

Answer 17

I think about that a lot. After that I was always moving forward in time.

Answer 18

What’s next, what’s next. At breakfast, what’s for lunch. At lunch, what’s for dinner. Then it grew larger and larger.

Answer 19

What about next week, next month, next year, 5 years from now, 10 years from now?

Answer 20

Then..the insomnia. If I fall asleep, will I wake up?

Answer 21

What if I do everything exactly right, always staying ahead, just to find out that it was all wrong?

Answer 22

The worry, always the worry, that’s what fills my days. The next thing and the next. And now. It’s now.