Chapter 1
First, the splat of white mayo, slathered onto the plump pig skin, already slightly burnt red by me. A movement occurs, and it shifts out of my view; a hazy strip of sand gusts into my rays. As I rub my golden eyes, I can clearly see, that it is in fact a girl, who, with a few more hours of experience at the DMV, will become woman. A shriek! The little toddler, too tall for his age, is splashing his stubby toes at Water’s lips. I squint; where did she go?
Behind the blue and cream striped tent, she changes out of her loose denim shorts, the sunscreen still brimming and starting to bubble on the tops of her broad shoulders. They fall to Sand with a small clashing click of the metal button. She looks around, peering around the corner, holding onto the fabric of the stall. Hmm, what is she doing? Then, I see it…
Her beautiful tropical suit, red, blue and peach, looks dazzling in my light. But…she isn’t smiling. She is pulling down her suit, all the way so it covers her cottage cheese dimpled butt and thighs. Turning around from her sister, tall, slim and brown, pig girl backs away slowly, then runs to the Jell-O water. Going to safety. Yet I can still see her body; my warmth spreads the liquid thin, giving a glisten to her magnolia buds blossoming on her chest, to the chipped nail polish on her mangled middle fingers.
To the eyelashes that are tangled, to the pink hair she colors and cuts and rips out. To the eyes as blue as a broken gem, to the knees that bend sideways and out. And yes, even to that. The one secret she holds deep. For that is the best part of her, the very best part of all.
She is beautiful. That goes without saying. I just hope she lives another year where I can see her in all her pale glory, standing with feet buried in the sand, and a floppy hat atop the head. That is when I see her for all she is worth, when she is unapologetically herself; raw and rare. No one else can compare.
But she does not live the next year, or the next. Not for ever again. But I know that at least we had the times I held her, asleep in my beams, the times she saw me out of the corner of the sky, thinking I was just the yellow moon lit up with flames. The times I gave her sweet gifts from the garden, dried up the soggy swings for her to play on. And I stayed up late, just for her, kept my heat from her when she ate her sour watermelon icicles, watching watercolor sunsets, sitting applesauce on the cracked driveway of her childhood home.
Skinning her shins thin on the heights of that Mountain of Stone, hiding with passion in the sticky branches of a faded pine tree, and yes, even when she got her first scratchy hummingbird tattoo, and her last Fancy Nancy tea party in thePark. I was there, I was always there.
The time has come, when she belongs not to me anymore, but to my daughters. For she is now in the sky with me, forever and ever, may come. Blinking, dazzling, slightly misshapen, but still forever distinctively herself, with a faint hue of rose, brimming along the ring.
