Scared of bats (rabies). Scared of mice (hantavirus). Scared of mosquitoes (encephalitis). Things that fly. Things that bite. I was scared too. Afraid of everything.
I was never afraid of you.
I was scared and I trusted you not to be. You would scale a 30-foot cliff without a harness. You would climb a birch tree in a boreal forest, cut strips of chaga mushroom and dry them by a fire. You would tend that fire all night, for me. I would sleep snugged in my sleeping bag like a mummy, only the tip of my nose daring the air, like a crocodile hunting in a still lake.
You were the older, by 11.2 minutes. One plus one is two, a magic number. When we were teenagers I raced to grow up, wondered why you held back. You didn’t long for the future, as I did. Didn’t want time to fly.
A room of strangers didn’t make my heart race. Introducing myself at debate meets. Walking into the gym when the music was booming. You said anything social was just trivial to you, boring, but I knew you were scared.
I asked what scared you. Plate tectonics, you said. Flood basalt eruptions. Anoxia.
Human beings, I said. That made you smile.
Those too, you said.
You were scared, and I didn’t want to be. And when you used words like extinction event I put my fingers over your lips. Made them stop.
Disaster plan. Go bags. Safe house. You were scared. That made me scared too. Maybe not scared enough. I always believed we could find somewhere safe to hide. The real world wouldn’t find us. We’d slip away. Tall shadows in a sea of silver trees. Steeping birch tea. Brewing birch beer. You’d build us a birchbark canoe, just right for two.
The time you visited and we went to the music festival, under the light of desert stars. We held hands and spun, skirts flying, hair streaming. The same hair, same long-arched, short-toed feet. Dancing with ourselves, and everyone watched and we didn’t even care. I remember feeling sorry, then, for anyone who was born singular and alone. Anyone who wasn’t us.
If the worst happens, wait, you told me. I will find you again. I will.
We will float. We will fly. We will. We.
Impossible to believe that there would never again be an us.
