held on tightly, anyone

[basilica]

She found it by accident.
When her mother made her walk miles and miles and miles to meet others that she didn’t really want to meet. Back when her glow was pale, barely there at all. Back when the heart was ordinary, too.

She found it by closing her eyes up real tight, while she choked out another strangled cry, and wished fiercely that her knees would stop hurting from all the walking. And they did. Just that simple. Like magic. And she had stopped crying then and gasped and told her mother, who she’d been angry with only moments before. But it was easy to forgive her when the knees didn’t hurt anymore. And her mother had been happy, too. And she had explained quite patiently what it meant, that it really was magic. Her mother called it healing and said that she had it, too. This made the child angry because that meant her mother could have helped her but had chosen not to.

But that was weeks ago now and there are other things that are different. The pale pink glow. The fact that sometimes she feels so much love for nothing in particular that it makes her throat tight and she can barely breathe around it. Her mother doesn’t have these things but she says they’re magic, too.

It is near daybreak when her mother drops her off at the playground. Because there are no children where her mother is going and she doesn’t offer any further explanation, just says that she’ll be back soon. So, the child stands in the center of that great big meadow and puts on that same nervous smile she’d worn when she’d met her father. Looks around for someone to save her from her unease, blinking boldly into the rising sun. And all that sunlight dampens her glow, makes her look almost ordinary.

And this is perhaps her first major dilemma: her want to blend in railing harsh against her want to look just like her father. It makes her anxious and her nervous grin starts to look like a grimace.

heaven's gate had such
eloquent graffiti

basilica