The Flights of Grasps

This is PART ONE in my series: dis-PLACE-ME-nt: a poetic vision of place and self.

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He catches the stratosphere with a simple flick of his toe. He soars watching the hilled landscape peppered with two story houses pop, pop, pop. Tiny explosions of confinement and individuality leave scars. There is one on his left shoulder blade from an infected sweat gland whose rotting stench as the surgeon sliced overwhelmed comfort. He is leaving this place called home hoping to dance among the isolation of vacuumed space. He wants to be once upon a time, far, far away.

She watches him leave with that simple flick unable to grasp his departure. She doesn't want him here any longer; she knows of the place once upon a time, far, far away and never told him. It is not here. She visited as a child on a boat racing across the ocean filled with Confusian hopes of traditions preserved in new worlds. It is only but a memory, fleeting like the Gobi sands. She gave up that dream to pursue tomorrow's profits and future wealth.

He leaves. She stays.

They shall never meet again.

A boy of 13 builds forts in crooked trees whose branches touch the grass. The boy loves the pink of polluted sunsets as the sun hides behind the ocean's horizon. He's too young and not yet educated so he can wonder at that pink in a way a child on the threshold of new knowledge enjoys possibility: the facts have not ruined the experience.

He's all grown up and that pink is just pollution. He knows that his only hope of once upon a time is to find hat one special fort dug between the roots of one particular crooked tree. But it is no longer there. It has been razed like so many things in this new world obsessed with progression and consumption. The reverence of past things is only made possible by preservation societies more worried about nostalgia than history. They do not care about childhood forts, and they only care for endangered nature. His tree is common like him. There is never any fear of the common becoming endangered.

They shall never meet again.

A young girl of seven rides waves with her mother as they cross the ocean leaving behind revolt and revolution for the promise of unimagined suburban isolation. She dreams of tomorrows filled with running free and wind racing through eyelashes unaware of the ocean spray as it wets her face. This ship of passage marks months of memories of tiny spaces and rationed food. She will never come back the way she came. Instead, she will travel business class with champagne in flutes and extra-wide seats. The dreams made possible only by wanting will be gone, and she will completely forget the vision of the glorious once upon a time, far, far away that rode on the edge of the storm that almost dashed her waves of dreams.

She's still grasping at nothing after he floats away wanting to feel the tangibility of possibility. That ship is gone replaced with an airplane and a more easily controlled environment. She no longer rushes to decks to feel the spray upon her face. The little girl who imagined is now a woman who years.

They shall never meet again.

He cannot sustain his flight or fancies. The weight of too many responsibilities grounds dreams of far, far away. He was almost there beyond the blackness of absolute space, and he momentarily saw the shining nothing of nowhere. Then a pop, pop, pop. Then a decent. Then the ground underneath his belly.

He tries to flick his way back to the stratosphere but it is more like a spasm of latent epilepsy. Tired, distraught, caught by the sand and leaves and twigs covering his overalls and hairy arms he no longer moves. He sleeps on the beach on a night of the new moon. He dreams.

She too is tired. She wants to sleep and find the shining nothing of nowhere. The empty clutched hand falls. He eyelids drop. The world around her vanishes, and she is asleep on her front lawn.

In the land of unconscious imaginings, they meet.

The desperation drove them away is nothing but the eclipsed sun. the moon in its sliver contains the memories needed to find once upon a time. But eye are blinded by the blackness of light, and hearts closed cannot be opened even here among the land of the impossible.

She looks at him and licks his cheek. She remembers his salt and he remembers her wetness. This was a moment early and unencumbered by cultures clash. This is what was love. So too is his flight. So too is her grasp. So too is their slumber.

They wake.

He is at the beach with the crashing ocean spraying his face. And he remembers.

She is in her front yard underneath a crooked tree with branches touching the grass. And she remembers.

They are both once upon a time, far, far away. And they smile.

But they shall never meet again.

And they will never meet again.

They never meet again.

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