anastaysa volkov / district six (fin)

You were flightless.

You were a bird who has never found her wings, a girl with too much hope that someone would help her fly.

As a girl, with stars for eyes and flowers picked from your mother's orchard woven into your wild auburn curls, you saw the world as one giant playground. The trees were swings as you hung of their coarse branches and the hills were slides as you tumbled down them - you used to giggle when your father yelled at you when your ash-wood skin was smeared in dirt. You loved the feeling of the spring grass stems against your skin as you rolled through the  gardens and you loved skipping down the concrete streets and stopping to ask a random stranger how their day was until your mother flashed the porch light twice, beckoning you to come back home.

At night, when the sun fled and nebulas burned, your mother used to recount the stories of her youth while massaging rosemary oil into your nest of hair. When she was done, she would use her calloused fingertips to tilt your head up so that you could look at her through the mirror and tell you how much she saw herself in you — the wild running innocence and unflinching curious nature. It's how all Volkov women are born, she would then say and sometimes you would smile, painting the pictures of your mother and grandmother running amok like you do.

Then your father died, and that's when you started to lose your footing in the world. You didn't know how to react as a girl whose only seen the light in a world clouded by darkness. It was a foreign and alien concept, and you  couldn't grasp the feeling that your dad wasn't going to walk through the front door with a big, arching smile that touched the corners of his eyes or play hide-and-seek in the orchard while your mother cooks dinner in the country-style kitchen, with the aromatic aromas wafting through open windows.

You remember the days after his death, the way it was still so clearly engraved in your mind.

The petrified wooden floorboards creaked under your rhythmatic footsteps. Your house was populated by people dressed in raven-black waistcoats and dresses. They took turns speaking to your mother and handing her packages wrapped in tinfoil, their earnest faces reflecting your mother's tears. You were told these people were here for your father, but that made no sense because you haven't seen him in days.

You ambled over to your mother with a blooming, cherry-red rose a short and balding man gave to you grasped in your right hand. You sat on the plush and brown sofa, the couch cradling your small frame.

"Momma, when is dad going to come home," you asked, delicately nudging her leg, just enough so you could get her attention. When she first turned to meet your eyes, hers were soft and caring. Then the first tear came streaking down her pale face, and when she tried to speak her voice cracked like a broken record. The people she was talking to tried to comfort her, but she pushed them back with one hand and gripped my shoulder with the other, "I have to do this - she needs to know the truth."

"Ana, your father isn't coming back home, ever. He has moved on to a better place, a better world, and it's our job to live on without him. But we have to remember that even though he isn't here, that he will always be with us, in here," she croaked, pointing her finger at your chest where your gently beating heart resides. "Our hearts will forever beat to the cadence of his own."