The fire heaved us up, and for a moment we hovered, suspended in blue.
We’d spent long evenings sewing together old bedsheets and nightgowns, the last pillowcase. We dreamed ancient cathedrals, and when we paused to crack aching fingers, our lips spoke: someday and somewhere and out there.
Our eyes were drawn again and again to that far away line that separates the earth and the sea from the sky. We gazed at the stars, we dreamed and wished and hushed and slept and sewed and sewed until our fingers bled.
We were only a mile over cornfields and streams. A tiny spark escaped its flame and bumped against our mother’s sheet that had held her in fevers and (while we wept) cradled her last dream.
The spark bumped and bit and tore and ate until it turned us into a blazing sun, and we fell and we fell and we fell.
And the somedays and somewheres rushed quickly past us in tattered and burning rags, and the patches of earth rushed up to collect us, but in that last second: the blue, the burning, the somewhere, the someday, the out there was all there, and oh what a glorious fall.
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About the Author: Linda Niehoff is a fan of silver water towers, instant film, and ghost stories. Her short fiction has appeared in TriQuarterly, New South, and Necessary Fiction, among others. She lives in Kansas where she's a part time photographer and a full time homeschooling Mom. Find her on Twitter: @lindaniehoff.
Story Song: "Such Great Heights" by Iron & Wine