Friday, January 11, 2008


  • the day the sky refused to die

    THIS IS A TALE about a girl and her pen pal.  This is a tale concerning a kite and the miraculous art of letter-writing.  Like tales of this sort, it is told in media res, in which the beginning is left out, and the end just in sight.  It is a tale unforgivingly bashful and careless, hence its succinct nature. 

    It is a tale in which a girl wonders aloud, “Daddy Dearest, will a story be written about me?” and the father rushes to the desk and returns with pen and paper saying, “Oh my, yes of course.”  It is a tale in which the girl has written a letter to her pen pal, one by the name of Ashlynn.  She has written to Ashlynn only to discover it is Sunday and the post office is closed.  “The post is closed, baby,” the father says.  So she makes a kite.  A kite made from a paper bag and yarn.  The father is dumbfounded by her and her solution, in all her understated beauty and prettyteeth and curlycurls. 

    It is a tale in which she attaches the letter to the kite’s tail and lifts it off the ground.  The father supervises her with hand signals from inside, behind the bay window.  She guides it.  She avoids the tree branches reaching out for it in half-wickedness, half-longing.  “Now, now, mind the clouds and the space debris,” she breathes to it, anxious.  It is a tale in which it is not a particularly breezy day, but a kite still defies transcontinental distances.

    But ultimately, this is also a tale of vigilance and caution and I want to tell her to heed tree branches and clouds and space debris and strangers and look-both-ways and reckless drivers and sharp objects, but in the end, my voice is just too small, too humble, too inadequate.

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