flight

by Betta Tham

Over the summer I spent a day in tears, when all my memories left me and I didn’t know what the flowers were called, or how I came to the pond I was sitting by, or how I usually calmed myself down, or if I’d ever really known these things before. 

There were trees everywhere and their faces were angry and they were bigger than me and my sneakers were wet and there were branches on the ground and I was afraid of how noisy I was and I was walking but I wasn’t sure how long I could walk for anymore. 

But she came when I called and guided me to the grass and we sat, and the water was a rippled canvas of treetops far above me, and in the water I could see the birds. There were only a few, chasing each other on currents I couldn’t see. The water clouds were moving slowly in breaths. Behind them were lines of pink and yellow, gentle and trailing, and the clouds moved slowly in breaths. 

I knew here that the world was trying to be kind to me, but I didn’t know any of it. 

The clouds were nice but I was not a cloud. The flowers were nice but there were so many that when I saw one I saw the others and was lost. I wished I could live in it all, but there were so many colors and places to get lost and everyone was alive and knowing and I was afraid of showing my unknowing.

She called to me, and I’d forgotten her, and the world was so much that I couldn’t see her face but just her eyes which were blue. She brought me away, and then there was a hill and a house and a garden and a mug of tea and a piece of chocolate in my hand and then my mouth and then it was gone again.

Next to me was lavender, and a little orange cat, and I was sitting on a stone. The flowers came up to my shoulders, so I barely had to bend tot and smelled them. They smelled like something nice that I think should have smelled like cigarettes and salt.

There was a great and simple pine that was glad to be covered in squirrels and ants, and to be its height, and to be where it stood. I couldn’t imagine it’s age, but I could imagine the way its roots must have run all the way beneath the soil and up again to my fingertips on the ground.

There were wildflowers in the meadow where I had never been. Around the edges of the meadow I could see the green dappled with the red of the raspberries I’d been picking yesterday. When I was younger I’d spend all my summers diving into the thicket and reaching all the berries at the center of the thorns. When it was blackberry season I’d go to my friend Annie’s, and when it was blueberry season we’d go to Maine. When the Mulberries came, I’d climb the tree in my backyard and stain myself until my fingers and knees and nose would be scrubbed and still dyed purple by dinner.

I looked down at my hands now, at the dirt in my nails and the green dye of grass. My knees had new scratches and for the first time in a few years I didn’t know where they came from.

She showed me the finches, who flew in twisting ribbons paths, back and forth from the big tree that might have been an oak, and who’se branches were enveloping the sun.

The brook was small, with water running smooth, so fast I couldn’t catch the leaf I dropped to see if I could catch it, and so cold that I stuck my whole hand in to feel.

Beneath my feet the grass was cool and soft, and when I walked I could feel it run in between my toes. Beneath my thighs it was itchy and pointy, and from lying down it tickled my cheeks, and if I turned my head it nudged at my nose.

Far away there was singing, and drums, and even further than that were mountains colored purple by the distance. One day I want to paint mountains.

I like the feeling of my stomach when I lie on my side and the way the wind teases my hair and the smell of jasmine tea and the way it fogs up glasses and a kiss on the cheek and old Irish songs and everything about dandelions and the smell of whiskey in a tin cup and the fact that I can always feel my own heartbeat without even reaching for my pulse.

I don’t know when but I was sitting on the grass with her, and she was nice and the grass was nice and sitting was nice and I was nice too.

A family of ducks flew by, a scout ahead circling and circling for who knows how long before the ten minutes between when I noticed and when they arrived. Here, it said, it is safe and lovely.

I think sometimes about how scary it must be to be a mother bird, and see your baby stop in the middle of her hatching, when all you want to do is show her the beautiful world, but she has to come out on her own first, and all you can do is say “please, I want you to exist.”