Moonstruck
untitled by Emma burden
My heels kept slipping in the mud. Each time I’d fall, she’d pull me up again, physically pressing all the air out of my lungs. She smelled like spring air, the dust from a church pew, and the fabric softener that clung to the t-shirt she had tied her hair into.
We stumbled upon a sort of fortress, made of concrete blocks. There was a lighter and burnt twigs next to an empty carton of Pabst Blue Ribbon beers. Older teenagers had been here, doing what we were doing, falling on our knees on the rocky terrain and laughing at each other.
She grew up in a fancy neighborhood, perched on the top of a hill, overlooking the two bridges that connected plots of what we called downtown. That world seemed so far away, the world where we would sit on a flat rock in the park, sitting above the Tennessee River and trying to smoke candy cigarettes.
Every time I’d fall, she’d grab my hand. I had only packed a pair of wedge heels for the weekend I spent at her house, under the impression we would spend our hours lounging in her family room, kicking our socked feet as we watched movies. My heels were still on my feet from attending Sunday school with her, and I knew I wouldn’t fare well in the dirt. But she smiled and told me she’d watch out for me, welcoming me into the woods and into her arms as I walked down the first steep path.
We climbed down the mountain and onto a cobbled street, walking back to her house on the pavement. I would have walked up the hill again for her, even if she wasn’t waiting to catch my fall. But, like the strong branches of a fir tree, I survived tumbling without her.
And when I fell, it wasn’t graceful. I tried to picture what her fall would have looked like, her feet in ballet flats and wearing spandex clothes, her rolling down the hill something more than choreography. She was always a better dancer than I am. She never fell though, not in the time I knew her, not in the days and weeks and months we shared, always moving quickly, always in fluid motions.
She helped me when I fell because she tried to make me conform to her, and in my moonstruck state, enamored in the idea of her helping me, her soft hands against my rough palms, pulling, and tugging, and yanking me out of the ground. I never grew. She pulled me from my roots and carried me along with her, and I would have tumbled less if I weren’t with her, stepping slowly over the rocks, sauntering over mud puddles, letting my body rest in the dirt to ground myself.
