Trying to Float

Johnny was trying to write but her fingers were stuck in the deep past and her mind had found it's way wandering into the future. She couldn't decide whether future events would occur, and therefore she often times found herself wallowing in what had been, trying to put it in nice little satin boxes so that she could sort it out and put it away for good. She uncrossed her legs and straightened her posture.

~

We all want to move forward. We all want to breath in that fresh air, suck it in and swirl it around in our lungs, becoming young again, but brushing off the dust that has settled, hopefully undoing the wrongs that had been done. Fresh once more. Naive once more. 

~

Johnny, short for Johannesburg, a name given to her by her father who had once fallen in love with the South African city, was lost in 2002, the year that had stolen her innocence. She'd moved on, or at least it looked as such to all who passed her by--she was rich in material goods--but she knew things to be different.

In school she'd learned about Aristotle and his "if a sea-battle will not be fought tomorrow, then it was also true yesterday that it will not be fought. But all past truths are necessary truths. Therefore, it is not possible that the battle will be fought." This made the future even more formidable, being that all of it was contingent. The past was at least in cement.

~

So she sat, staring at her computer, and trying to formulate a sentence, as visions of sugar sticks floating above her head, each one pricking her in just the right place to make her wince and salivate at the same time.

He had been much older than her. At the time she thought nothing of it, being that it was only four simple years, and it had seemed like so few in her young mind. Eighteen to fourteen--nothing much to a fourteen year old, but to all who have passed these adolescent years know the depth of what those four years hold, a lifetime of maturity.

His wide brown eyes had beckoned her from across the grass where he and his friends leaned nonchalantly on the cement stairway they skated after hours. She and her friends, little chickens on an enormous farm filled with ravaging pigs and goats, admired the older boys, many of whom were already men, at least legally. 

They shouldn't have been gawking and she shouldn't have been prey. Someone should have warned her, or maybe they did, but we all know that no one listens to the words of a sage until they've already passed into a position of finding themselves splintered.

He must have seen her weakness. Those wide eyes, so fresh and new to the world, just waiting to be blinded. She welcomed him openly, expecting a walk, but instead getting a jolt.

~

Years later, as she admired her scar, and the memories of how she got out, she thought of this.

Now, she was sitting in her golden chair, surrounded by feathers, looking grand, but she could not write. 

Not a word. Not one inch into the unknown future.

All Rights Reserved. @ L. Masaracchia 2023






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