Chagrin, she tells herself. It’s all about chagrin.
She finally understands the insistence of philosophers on human absurdity.
But she stands on the edge of the roof in ill-fitting stone washed jeans. The waistband is a vague gesture at her hipbone, those which cut like shark fins.
The wind picks up and her hair becomes a forest of chestnut kelp. It runs with wild abandon along her exposed ankles and billows her awkwardly cut sleeves.
She closes her eyes and turns her face toward the sun, the light burning through to create a bloody horizon. She thought if she refused the nipple at birth, her mouth screwed shut – she could avoid being tethered to this world.
The infant had become a woman who had been fed the lies of choice. Each choice was to be a step upward to freedom and enlightenment. The Ballot was to instill in her confidence that her opinions could change the world. The Degree to certify her knowledge. They turned her over and on her blank skin inked in nine numbers.
Curling her toes, she feels the sandy surface of the shingles biting between callouses. Her childhood games were preparation for adulthood. Play correctly and you will be rewarded. She was told that the wicked would be punished for cheating and her revenge handled by authorities. The reward for staying beneath the skirt was unthinking joy. They regarded the power of the human spirit with the same respect of as the urge to empty ones bladder. Uncontrollable, yet able to be channeled through the proper facilities with societal suggestion. Emotions now had labeled wastebaskets. The psychiatrists bin for madness, the doctors bin for sadness, and the jail bin for guiltlessness.
She touches the hollow of her neck and opens her eyes, her irises becoming silver wire in a mere heartbeat. The light swallowed her as she pitched her body forward, hands like starfish in the sky.
Forward did not indicate necessarily the empty stories of air beneath her, nor the solid safety of the roof behind her.
The one choice she found that they could not teach or steal from her was love.
And to her, it never really was a choice at all.
What was most important to her came like heat lightning in the summer’s haze. And try as they might, love was a hurricane they could not blow away. Still now, they plot, to break up vapors in the sky. But if love does not come as a raging storm, it will be the stream’s chilly current at your calf. And if they block the flow, it will always find a way to gallop through the bloodstream and straight to the heart.
Absurdity, she thinks, is the way they say head over heels. They want love to sound foolish. But she knows if she keeps her eyes on the sun, every direction is up.
Those stairs are real.
Those stairs go somewhere.
Find your staircase in the sky.