Prologue
I’ve never felt real.
Whether it was piss poor genetics or a somehow inherent existential crisis. It has always been the feeling of outside looking in. A ghost watching between the rafters. Scaling walls and ducking into shadowed corners. Always one step ahead, always knowing, always feeling everywhere.
′You are you’ she would say. Like how the wind was strong, elusive, and beautiful. The wind knows its importance. ′You are my daughter.′
I never mention that the wind isn’t alive.
She smells of peaches and sweet tea, and her smile is medicine on the bad days. she hugs me to her side when we brave the town, because the air always turns sour around the people who aren’t her. She always knew what their staring meant, and I did too- But she could not smell them like I could, nor could she hear the dull staccato of their heart beat twitch to life when we passed.
Though their scrunched brows and low whispers never did much to hide the disdain. I had then figured I simply did not need anyone else but her. The loneliness doesn’t get to me as much after the revelation.
I am 7 when I realize telling a birthday girl her cat was going to die was not a usual occurrence nor socially appropriate. When the tabby is found left as a gut stain on the roadside, I do not blame them when I fail to receive an invite the next year. My mom buys me a cupcake and we sing to ourselves instead.
I am 12 when she gives me a scratch to win card and a dime. The bright colored print reminds me of the eighties, and I reminisce about a memory that does not belong to me. I do not pick up the card, but I tell her she won only a dollar. She scratches it for herself and smiles at her mediocre winnings. She pats my head and tells me I’m a smart girl before throwing it out the window. She never asks again after that.
I am 16 when I dream of a beautiful woman in a white gown, sprawled elegant in rest. The image is all too familiar 6 months later, when I watch my mother smile for the last time. Her chest slumps and her eyes shine gray. She dies whispering to me a story I’ve heard since I was a babe- her hand now cold, and her life belonging to the wind once more. I don’t let go until they’re wheeling her away in sheets.
‘There once was a girl who saved the ones she loved’
It is then I realize there never was a place for me here. I can only retrace the steps she left behind, for I cannot make my own.
