'Between Before/After'

A lone sparrow flies through the sky, each outstretched wing a blade. The sky is not cut, but the air slices, ripples, lands on my skin. The flight of that sparrow separates time into two clean parts: one Before, and one After.

Before: I woke up once without the slow rousing from sleep. Not a gentle wakefulness where each conscious second comes clearer than the last. No. One moment, I had my eyes closed, my mind drifting somewhere where reality won't hold it down. And then the next, my eyes open. Aware of the curtain billowing gently in the breeze. The sunlight filtering in, diffused rays from the south-facing window. Gone one moment, here the next. And perhaps that's where my story begins.

How do I move in a world where I did not grow, where I wasn't planted as a seed, a seedling, a little sprout—instead I woke to find myself reaching toward a sun I have no memory of meeting, with feet planted, roots tangled, trapped? I can't unroot myself despite the persisting feeling of not being supposed to be here. 'Cause if I do, I’d die. Wither away. A green fleck of the land itself, sent wheeling away by the turbulent wind.

I once ate my favourite meal in the world without remembering how it came to be my favourite. I devoured it, and tasted nothing. I smiled, licked my lips, thanked my mother for buying me the treat. I painted something, remembering only the soft shk-shk-shk of the paint brush against rough canvas, but not recalling the colours. The mixing. The choices. Even the idea. I looked up, and saw a mess in front of me that others praised as art. But I tilted my head, trying to find angles, figures recognizable, and came up blank.

I kneeled to pray, and looked up to find eyes looking at me, a face close to mine, and yet still feeling alone and unheard. And I was blessed, they said, to have been born with eyes that see what others cannot. They say I have come to know divinity through these terrifying visions. And yet how do I tell them that what they celebrate as holy, what they called the light, I came to know as brimstone and fire? That I have come to know their god through some senseless form of violence. That I was a daughter with no father, and a mother I could not reach despite her hands always being in mine? Blessed be me, who spilled her blood and was proclaimed chosen by those who have witnessed my suffering.

And after: I have stayed awake long enough to know that the light sometimes does not burn. That it comes gently, orange and yellow painting everything calm and beautiful. That sometimes, crying is not painful. It's beautiful, and I can laugh as I heave heavy ugly tears that stain the cheeks and nose, red watercolours spreading with the paint of life. That these tangled roots don't have to be roots, instead a cosy nest from where I stay as storms weather my way.

Though, still, I cannot taste and cannot feel, I have found tiny slivers of salvation from the process of slicing fruits and giving embraces that others can enjoy. That the paintings I make, though I cannot understand nor love them, make somebody else feel something, even when I cannot.

And yet, I look up still at the sky when it's dark and feel more seen than in the garish sun. The first time I saw a bird after coming into consciousness in this wretched, sweet, titillating life, I felt my back arch and squirm, the bones cold to the core, muscles spasming, waiting to see if I'll grow wings.

That maybe their god doesn't exist beyond marble statues, unseeing eyes, unhearing ears, and sometimes the people who claim to embody love can crack my heart in an effort to find treasure where there is only sinew and blood… But they're not the only people here. Some people are kind, they don't understand, but they'll hold my hand anyway. They say they'll pray for me, but when they say the word "prayer," it sounds less like a damnation and more like them making room in their hearts for a burden like me. And they smile, they wipe my tears, they listen to my warbling voice and my nonsense words, and they know I'm not like them, but they still say, "Have a seat, anyway. I'll make you your favourite drink."

So now, I see the sparrow in the sky. Slicing the air with its feather-razor wings. A small thing, a speck, a nothing in the grand scheme of things. And yet a piece in this complicated, terrible puzzle, that sent ripples of wind pricking my skin on a day that feels too fake. And I look at the time I've spent in this strange earth. The before. The after. The pain. The living through it anyway.

And I smile, and I say, "I think I'm done here. It's time to fly away."

And so I leap. I'll fly. I'll grow wings, if it's the last thing I'll ever do. I'll be suspended, not in the before and the after, but in the now. Where I'm half-floating, half-falling, depending on who you ask. And the scream that leaves my mouth could be a laugh or a wail. And the silence that comes after may be the last movement of a symphony, or it is the same silence that came before and will come after.