Sky and Mud

It’s not that you feel yourself rising up into the sky; it’s that you feel the ground gently falling away from you.

You lean forward and look out over the basket and what you feel is not fear, but peace.

Up here, the world is silent. And still. You are not aware of the wind, although you know that without it, you couldn’t be up here, sailing the skies.

You remember that dream you had when you were a kid, the one where you were flying and it felt so natural and so right and so free. You woke up from the dream but all you wanted was to go back so you shut your eyes tight and put your head back on the pillow and tried really really hard to fall back asleep. But it was gone. You never had that dream again.

This, you realize, is the closest you’ve ever come.

*
It is now 12:30. You have just come home from the Fiesta. Your groupmates will be here in a half an hour to pick you up. You make a cup of tea, change into a t-shirt, head out the door. You are wide awake—you haven’t slept all night—but you are still dreaming of flying.

*

You are squishing your toes in mud. Your feet let you feel: this sand feels like wet brown sugar, packed in tight, but this here feels like white sugar left to the air for too long. These mud pancakes crack under your feet; this riverclay sucks your toes in quick.

You make a sandangel.

You feel like a kid, playing in the dirt. No, you are a kid playing in the dirt. That other person, that grown-up you, the one with the camera and the pen, you’ve left her behind today. She’s tired of seeing the world through a lens. She’s forgotten what it feels like…to feel. The mud, the sand, the water, the clay; the spontaneity, the playfulness, the fun.

*

Your feet are covered in dried mud. Your hair is heavy with dirt. The legs of your jeans are wet with riverwater.

You smile.

You haven’t forgotten anything.