I Can Fly

Is she a mad woman, or an angel of extraordinary and impractical magic?

I Can Fly

by Monroe Tate

Do you believe that anything is possible? Perhaps that the price of our wishes and fantasies is furtively hidden away from consciousness. Along with the price, an answer simply stashed within the belly and core of Mother Earth herself. 

There was once a woman who believed she could fly. A gift bestowed upon only the most graceful of creatures, one of which mortal was not. Butterflies and swans, yes, they were granted the privilege of disappearing into the ocean that was the sky. Would it not be fair to trade the burdening of the woman with a set of equally heavy wings to allow her to escape? The binding pull of gravity seemed to disagree, holding onto womanhood with every last grasp of life. 

However, this woman believed she could fly. Knew she was blessed with the ability. A hysteric harpy were surely the words to follow of those she told she could take flight. Some inquired of whether she had taken to the sky previously, demanded she set forth at that moment following her declaration. Only at night, she would reply. A time void of all light other than the flying sources of astronomical and miraculous beauty, were her wings readily available to her. Every night she would indeed fly, this is indisputable. Her medium however was a visionless marvel limited to the drift of sleep and dreams. When her tangle of hair lay upon the warmth and comfort of her pillow and the steadily slowing of her eyes came to one last final glance into the dazed gaze of her bedroom that welcome the embrace of slumber, she was without a doubt flying. 

She would spend her days in a dull daze of moving limbs commanding her tiring legs to perform its purpose, yet her evenings she spent of exploration. Her world was but an intricate puzzle waiting to be solved at the tips of her fingers during flight. From the clouds that originated from her own skull, her world was far less lonely. She could survey beneath her with full lucidity the flightless birds who often denied her gift. Beyond them the cities that sheltered them, the lights that nourished them, and the humanity that birthed them. The beauty from said experience was not enough to sustain the woman however, as she wished for the faith of others and to materialize her gift by sharing it. For to keep it to herself would be a lacking of virtue and a harboring of greed, was it not? 

The woman promised to a man (a man who wished to believe the woman yet remained a man who only believed what he could see) that she indeed possessed the ability, outside of her wondrous like state of sleep. Her promise led her, like a mother to child, with said man to a cliff overlooking a violent and surely disastrous sea. Only at night of course as she previously promised. This night though would be set in the reality of open eyes and focused minds. The man, skeptical as he was, gave into temptation of possibility seeing the flight and therefore plight of the woman. The woman adorned nothing but a contrast of flowing white silk to the ebbing darkness of night. Her soft feet planted firmly at the edge of this cliff, her cliff, sinking slowly into the union of grass and soil akin to a flower blooming in reverse. The man was but her audience, a bystander favorable of the presence of the woman who dared to fly. Beyond them and her cliff was the thrashing of the ocean that mimicked the darkness of the atmosphere. The sea mocked the woman, taunted and called out to her ever so wickedly with each splash and spray of dreary liquid that crashed into the face of her cliff. 

Of course as ignorant as the man and men generally are, she knew that he was deaf to the callings of the sea. It was a voice only she could hear and a voice only she could silence. Without signal, the woman lifted one foot from the ground, into the opening of air lacking solidity and platform. Before consideration and time for reaction, followed her other foot. Within the lapse and ripple of the combination of seconds, minutes, hours and days that were the building blocks of time, something did happen to the woman. She descended with abandon in a graceful movement that only the woman could possess. Like any other woman who dared to dream, the ocean swallowed her whole and dared not spit her out. 

It was the last that the man, or any other man, would see of this woman again as she disappeared into a deep and dreadful grave that consumed her light, her life. Yet, a witness such as the man would indeed tell you the woman managed her goal, she was indeed a woman who could fly. Those last seconds of her being, one particular second was spent in suspension. A suspension that when slowed down, picked, and pulled apart one would be able to also survey a woman in flight. An occurrence that the woman herself noticed in the little moments left of herself, one she was able to contend with on the way down that filled her warm body with joy until her cold corpse was filled with nothing but the taste of the sea. 

A flickering and fading moment of flight was all the woman managed, yet her promise rang true. The woman took flight. Possibility is endless then, it must seem. Is anything truly possible? She was allowed and granted a gift of flight, little as it was, paid for by the unburdening of life. She traded herself and her being for a moment of magic that by far was worth more than decades and lifetimes of comprehension that erased the possibility of impossibility.

Author's Note

A story written on whim, of fascination with the extent of possibility within our all too mortal realm.

Reviews

[θεά]

You really ought to publish this. I mean it. It has potential to move mountains- those who refuse to move away from their fetters of misogyny- those who consider literature to be supine forms of escapism- those who feel imagination is overrated. You've seamlessly meshed aspiration with realism and that is extremely satisfying and refreshing on a writers' forum.

Stunner of a work.

[Monroe]

Mallika,

Your response has truly made my day. I’ve been feeling fairly unsure of myself lately and this particular piece and your words mean so much (considerably more coming from a gifted writer such as yourself). Thank you.

[θεά ]

I mean every bit. This is exceptional writing and you shouldn't undermine your worth. Take care.