She wrote before she knew the alphabet. She scribbled line after line in a little yellow notebook, the way one pounds random keys on the piano before learning how to play. She imagined the words as she went and forgot them soon after. She couldn’t pin her thoughts to paper like tropical butterflies mounted on the wall; she didn’t have that magic yet.
Another memory, not quite first, but longest surviving: it poured one autumn in preschool, the way it doesn’t seem to anymore. The storm drains clogged with brown matted leaves, creating temporary streams which ran beneath the tires of parked cars. She would stand in her froggy rain boots and allow the water to run over the rubber, chilling her toes.
Sometimes, in class, she sways slightly. Like the top of a redwood tree, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It feels safer somehow. She is Dory; remember that movie? She is the animated fish, swimming through a pixelated ocean. “Just keep swaying . . . Just keep swaying . . .”
One of her favorite places is the cafe with the big windows and the art for sale on the walls. Half a donut, two mismatched mugs of tea, something inexplicable playing on the radio.
“Remember the day,” she shouts to herself, “when we sat around a table at Berkeley Bagel, bothering everyone with our laughter?”
“Remember the glass jar filled with milky coffee we all wanted because there wasn’t enough to share?”
She wishes that nameless man hadn’t flown his stupid drone into the flock of sea birds. She wishes the rainforests wouldn’t burn down; she wishes the world were better.
The thrill of Halloween fades a little more each year, like a dying light bulb. And sometimes the words are just gone, little crustaceans burrowing into the sand where her curious fingers can’t reach. But, but! She stood beneath a waterfall once, clinging to the slippery stones and to her own bravery. She can’t fly, can only pump higher and higher on the swing set, and most days, that’s close enough.
She used to watch Friday evening sunsets through the library windows once all the cookies were reduced to crumbs, once all the stories had been told.
Now, she rides the city bus home. One filled with more evening light than people, and she tells herself, chants it, “You’ll miss this one day.”
Another memory, not quite first, but longest surviving: it poured one autumn in preschool, the way it doesn’t seem to anymore. The storm drains clogged with brown matted leaves, creating temporary streams which ran beneath the tires of parked cars. She would stand in her froggy rain boots and allow the water to run over the rubber, chilling her toes.
Sometimes, in class, she sways slightly. Like the top of a redwood tree, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It feels safer somehow. She is Dory; remember that movie? She is the animated fish, swimming through a pixelated ocean. “Just keep swaying . . . Just keep swaying . . .”
One of her favorite places is the cafe with the big windows and the art for sale on the walls. Half a donut, two mismatched mugs of tea, something inexplicable playing on the radio.
“Remember the day,” she shouts to herself, “when we sat around a table at Berkeley Bagel, bothering everyone with our laughter?”
“Remember the glass jar filled with milky coffee we all wanted because there wasn’t enough to share?”
She wishes that nameless man hadn’t flown his stupid drone into the flock of sea birds. She wishes the rainforests wouldn’t burn down; she wishes the world were better.
The thrill of Halloween fades a little more each year, like a dying light bulb. And sometimes the words are just gone, little crustaceans burrowing into the sand where her curious fingers can’t reach. But, but! She stood beneath a waterfall once, clinging to the slippery stones and to her own bravery. She can’t fly, can only pump higher and higher on the swing set, and most days, that’s close enough.
She used to watch Friday evening sunsets through the library windows once all the cookies were reduced to crumbs, once all the stories had been told.
Now, she rides the city bus home. One filled with more evening light than people, and she tells herself, chants it, “You’ll miss this one day.”