When she was little, she climbed onto the velvety, mossy green chair and would later be told that she fell and split her head open against a glass table filled with seashells. Was that really the way of it, she wonders?
“You didn’t cry,” her mother told her. “Not once. The doctors were so impressed by my brave little girl.” Her mother’s fingers travel along the direction of the scar, which runs perpendicular to where her middle part lives.
She watches the sunlight creep toward her as a cloud moves, and she is relieved because her skin requires heat. Always to be wrapped in it or covered by it. To her left are old brick buildings that reek of the knowingness of their interiors: boredom, old musky carpets, and lifeless fluorescent bulbs with the shadows of dead insects. But if she ignores them, she can focus on the greenery that lives between each building. Butterflies and moths flit about native plants, and she is happy.
To follow the sun along asphalt and tsk at a sunbathing turtle who has chosen an unfortunate pond as its temporary dwelling. A woman is doing push-ups against a dirty bench, paper towels under her hands. A man is vaping in his open-air Jeep, his light-haired, tanned legs pressed to his chest as he scrolls mindlessly on his phone.
When she does difficult things, she thinks of the little version of herself who didn’t cry. Was that really the way of it?
Thoughts?