#15

She was half walking half skating on those shoes with wheels hidden in the heels. She was coming up the sidewalk as I was going down. Maybe she was ten. She was laughing and singing and moving on her wheeled shoes. Laughing and singing and moving on her wheeled shoes, happy, unselfconscious. Something welled up in me. I wanted to do what she was doing! I could feel the freedom inside my chest. For nearly a second, her eyes and my eyes met. No, it wasn’t our eyes that met. They were just the portals for something else that recognized itself. We passed each other, and I wondered… If I wanted to do what she was doing, wouldn’t I do it? What was stopping me? Somewhere between ten and now, somewhere long ago, I began to care what others thought of me. So, no, I didn’t want to do what she was doing, because I cared more about how it would look than I did about laughing and singing and moving with or without wheeled shoes. 


Carol Barrow
May, 2018