Nine Years Old

Maybe you've wondered what I've written about so many times over. Who did I love? Who did I lose… What did I lose, you'd ask, that could resound in my memory like this, years after it's [she's] gone? Yes, I'm breaking the fourth wall and that constitutes bad acting, but maybe it's necessary. Maybe I want to look past the blinding lights and into each of your eyes and tell you, specifically you, her story. Because she'd want me to, I think. She'd tell me to stop hiding behind my metaphors and half-smiles and held-back tears.

She never did, you see. She was [is] free.

She had this smile that would knock you over sometimes. Her name tasted like rainbows on your lips, and you'd grin when you said it, an impish grin like hers. She never did care about staying out of the mud or thinking twice. She just jumped in, and when you asked her why she did it, she'd ask you why not? Why not love anybody? Why not care? Why not jump in the puddles and soak your clothes? Why?

She liked to question.

Oh, I hated it. I used to be that older-sibling type that would berate her for being so silly, so young. Grow up, kiddo, I'd tell her. Hold my hand and cross the streets. But she wouldn't. She'd twist away halfway across the road and twirl and skip and sing her way to the other side. Driver's jaws dropped and laughter floated out the windows, but she just smiled and told me that she made somebody happy that way. And then she skipped off to the ice cream store, losing her flip flops along the sidewalk.

She gave everything.

But it got taken away. Babe, you lost everything and you still liked to make people laugh. It's a talent, isn't it? She ignored the pain and ignored the loss of most everything she'd had and decided to colour in as many colouring books as possible. And then she announced that she was bringing lunch to the man on the highway who didn't have any food; she refused to take no for an answer, so he got a lunch every time she drove to the hospital. Which was pretty often.

She looked for the good things.

It wasn't fair at all, was it? I'm sure you agree, whoever reads her story. It wasn't fair because one day she went to the hospital and didn't come home. It wasn't an appointment. It wasn't routine. And the man on the highway knows it, too. He misses asking God to bless the little girl that fed him when he had nothing and she had nothing except for hope to live.

She didn't live, though. It wasn't fair.