Then
August 22, 2014 § 2 Comments
(Martha Andrews Donovan)
THEN
I believed in the firmness of the sky, the comfort of eleven-year-old skin, the hedges I refused to carry. And when the first horse I ever rode balked at the dead sheep that bled in my path, I held fast and did not let go. I saw a girl tremble with sunstroke as she was lifted in her chair and placed in a tub of ice, but I did not wish to be carried off to some stiller place and because I was young I believed I could choose it to be so. I asked a boy from France to dance with me, a boy who was shorter than I and who I could barely understand, except when he put his arms around my waist and I could feel his pulse beating beneath his skin. I rolled over in my kayak just to see what it felt like, over and over, and felt the longing in my lungs – a longing so simple I had to find my way to the surface.
Martha Andrews Donovan: One Writer's Excavation 
Martha, this is just lovely. You have evoked that youthful belief in the world so beautifully.
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Thanks, Lisa! I am trying to find my way back to that eleven-year-old girl.
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