I’m flying blind. I am without location – I’m gasping for air. The beat of my heart is my hourglass, my blood the sand. The air I breathe, the life within me – the smell of freshly cut grass, the gentle sweetness in the air before it rains. It just happened. I was too busy learning how to walk to, crawling and crying for food, tasting the good and the bad. Here I am.
My feet touch the pavement, the 20th century’s fields, the horizonless metropolis. These are our bee-hives, dripping with the warm golden honey of currency, the pollen of war and recession, consumer optimism, fuel in the tank and end-of-year sales. Here I am.
What could have been? The windows that closed I’ll never know, only the path I tread. I follow my nose, instinct and the pang in my gut. How does the stick insect know what a tree looks like? How do I know who to love, how to breathe, which way to turn? My eyes burnt with tears and my throat was hoarse from garbled moans long before the first day of school. Here I am.
Here I am! I shout it out - but to whom? Who is there to hear my cry? Why do I love, breathe, turn?
Who taught the spider a length of web?
Here I am.
