To Be Four Again

To be this tiny dancer again, unselfconscious, moving with liquid awkwardness from one newly attempted movement to another. Yet the sensation was more one of flying than dancing. It was not a series of movement, it was one heavenly period of movement untethered by the planet's intent to force gravity on me. No one can teach you to feel this, some do, some don't. I'd probably not have thought of the sensation being one of flight had I not (one a hundred dollars worth of dare) thrown myself out of an airplane over na old airfield in southern Ontario. I was seventeen, and age when rational thought only gets in the way of a good time.



I am still not much of a dancer, but I can still fly here and there. At the apex of every leap stands liberation, a suspension of the laws of gravity and the laws of man, and you don't have to remember to pull the ripcord. At the peak of every turn a mild hallucination of impressionist delights. How do I learn to live without wings?