Sunday 16 November 2014

The Girl In the Clouds



It seems that I have been born this way for I can not remember anything else, with hands bound behind my back, afloat in a land to which I see no beginning from end. It is the only one I have ever known, my home in the clouds.

Alone, in the blinding blue of the horizon, with my neck curled over my concave chest, knees hugged close to my body, hands restrained and wings unleashed so fully and yet so idle, a binding oath to a sky I never signed up to be a part of, that's where you can find me.

The cloud is an endless mist, whenever my eyes rise to meet it I feel like I am losing my sight ever so slowly, for whenever any color tries to fight its way through the dense particles, it dissipates, getting strung along the distance until it reaches my eyes a diluted weaker version of itself. I wonder what it’s like to experience those waves of magic in their full strength, but, I’m merely a creature of gray who’s in love with the hues.

Sometimes, I battle the mist with my nose, try to dive down as far as the cloud would allow me, to get a clearer vision of the desert beneath me. I long for nothing more than the dirt, to bathe in the brown of the mountains and the beige of the dunes, to sneeze out the earth from my nostrils and then delve into even deeper realms, in a crystal sea under a clear morning sky, I imagine it would not spare a current or a wave to caress every layer of my onion heart.

However, I still live in a cage of white, a curse so desirable by so many, I've heard them in their sleep, in their dreams of flight and freedom. All they can perceive is the vertical horizon, they do not know, that the horizon they wish for, while wide, is too wide to sustain the truth.

So I spin, around and around, curled in this fetal position without hope for deliverance, cycle after the next, hello, farewell, then hello again. I turn and fold over myself in the air until the movement makes me so dizzy that all my consciousness starts to beam out of me. Promises seeping one by one, and dream after another leaves my body as I try to hold on to the most basic of human needs, the need for a peaceful calm, a stillness that allows for a foundation to build from.

But in this land, I’m a drifter without direction. The wind decides all.

The sun rises, I can see a hint of purple coming from the darkness, it sets and I can see a faint string of orange that thins into perfect black, nothing passes through except the extraordinarily strong light, and even that dies under the feet of my cage, but not without seducing my mind with possibilities first. What will happen if I could control my own wings, I wonder.

I try to summon my knowledge, my faith and all my might, hoping that it would be powerful enough to redeem me, but the horizon is too spacious and cruel enough to scatter all what keeps me alive over the distance. 

Hope is a form of vanity that girls like me simply can not afford. It’s sinful to wish for the wind to alter its will for you, the wind always stirs forward and upward, it whirls once or twice commanded by its own whims and at its own time, so why would it change direction for me? Why would it suddenly dart downward with me leeching its back?

It can not be. This cloud will be my grave. There can be nothing akin to freedom when Will becomes a force barely strong enough to tease, but never to induce action. Without a plan to carry on, or a scheme grounded in intellect, my dreams are merely delusions. 

If there is indeed a higher power, then he is doing a great job at dancing on the sinews of my heart. For whenever I do my very best to descend an inch from the dreamless cave of smoke, with a flick of his masterful finger he sends another storm my way to send me twirling around anew, to trap me in another cloud for maybe a century or two. To what purpose does he keep me, I can not understand. 

I bet, from the ground, that I would look like some kind of celestial being, a winged phoenix that appears on clearer days or an angel envied for how far away from the roots of the earth she is. Little do they know, that the roots of the earth is what I yearn for, for years and years without a bit of rest.

If only they knew how I wait so eagerly for a bird that could soar high enough to be within the reaches of my voice, or close enough so that I might gaze upon their complete and capable form and beg them to teach me how to control my wings, “I want to be an acrobat on the invisible ropes of sunshine, like you are.” I would say.

I would love nothing more that to dance and play on the specks of dust, like a bird on its landing, I would carry the seeds of the earth in my soles and between my lips then take off once more, so that it might dig new roots somewhere into the earth. 

Needless to say, the birds never do so much as to offer me a single glance.