Dear AnyOneGirl…

Dear Ruby,

Have you heard about that alien theory?

How they’re more advanced than we are because they can bend space and time,
travelling faster into the future by folding years in half? I’m not sure if I believe in
aliens, or God, but I feel like there’s something else out there, something bigger than I
am.

Either way, I only pray on planes.

I ask God over-politely, as if he’s an acquaintance who owes me no favours, to please
get me there safely. I always add that it’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of him, even
though I know I’ll do it again. I’m so scared of dying in the middle of something, on
my way somewhere.

There is a woman sitting next to me tearing the thin plastic around her grey
blanket. She has watery green eyes and thick chalky fingers choked with stacks
of yellow gold rings. Her hair drips down her face like black ink. She’s been in
Washington and says she saw Obama. I wonder if she believes in God or aliens.

For 6 months I have been buried in fast streets and loud skies, walked through grey
and red days under square cut shadows that fell like black sheets on my shoulders;
6 months of wrists wrapped around each other, so tight that bruises flowered like
patches of violets on my skin.

I have memories stuffed between my ribs like feathers; I can feel them with every
breath. I wonder if our daughters will fly away like I did. Our sons will have his skin;
they will be the colour of summer afternoons. I miss him already, but I also miss
myself.

I want to go back to where all my scars came from, where January is warm and where
there is old laughter in the backs of our throats. Where I know the rhythm of the
raindrops so well that I can dance between them and stay dry in a storm. The dead
end street where we used to ride our bikes, our tires burning round the never-ending
curve of summer’s belly, will still be a dead end street. Underneath its case my pillow
is stained with circles of my 19-year-old sleep and sweat. The water is close by.

Strapped into my seat, gravity rips in my ears as we rise. I can hear the clouds
tumbling above me already. When we land it will be two days later, and I can’t figure
out if I’m light years ahead of myself or have been left behind, in the same place that
time dissolves in the sky.

Love,

Amy

Read more of Amy’s work here at onislands