At our wedding I stepped on her toes all night because I didn't know how to dance, but she never said a word about it.
[The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]
leaving behind an empty and flooded alleyway and me on my knees nearly weeping much like I wept as they lowered my daughter's casket into the ground and my husband creased the leather of my gloved hand because that winter was particularly frigid, remember the icy roads of course, and we could see our breath crystallizing in the air right before our eyes, but I was not amazed by him stepping through the air or confused when he disappeared from sight because somehow I understood that he was more than a man and that the air was his to control, which was why I had followed him from the bus, into the streets, and into this small alley, and I accepted his silence as unspoken defeat because how would he have been able to save my daughter if he had not been there, a thought I had been unable to form while I stalked him through the streets, and how could I have expected him to be there when I myself was not there for her when she left this world, yet I had still followed him and still accused him and pleaded with him no matter how impossible my request, and so he stepped through the air and left me alone to wonder what could have been had I met him before the accident,a process that took me a relatively short period of time, and then I was back in the streets watching the blind stumble and seeing the lights go out in buildings and the streetlights grow dim while I wandered around with no destination, merely exploring and hoping perhaps to find him again, but knowing that he was far away from me, and I wondered what had caused this act of god, what had brought this event upon us without warning, because there certainly was no apparent cause that I could point my fingers at and easily label, which did not surprise me because one can not expect to create meaning from something so tremendous, as if it were possible to understand the vastness of the ocean or the birth of a mountain, and I was left with the feeling of ever expanding warmth within my chest just pushing through into my arms and legs and deeper into the ventricles and ganglion nerves as if a warm blanket was being wrapped around me as I fell asleep, but without any sense as to what planted the feeling inside me, so that I could merely shake my head back and forth as I wound my way among the buildings that had turned themselves into island towers amid still waters, and I remembered the space of nothing that seemed to unfold itself in the middle of the street in front of our bus and that moment in which I saw him first step through the air and onto the street, if I had truly seen
[The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]
leaving behind an empty and flooded alleyway and me on my knees nearly weeping much like I wept as they lowered my daughter's casket into the ground and my husband creased the leather of my gloved hand because that winter was particularly frigid, remember the icy roads of course, and we could see our breath crystallizing in the air right before our eyes, but I was not amazed by him stepping through the air or confused when he disappeared from sight because somehow I understood that he was more than a man and that the air was his to control, which was why I had followed him from the bus, into the streets, and into this small alley, and I accepted his silence as unspoken defeat because how would he have been able to save my daughter if he had not been there, a thought I had been unable to form while I stalked him through the streets, and how could I have expected him to be there when I myself was not there for her when she left this world, yet I had still followed him and still accused him and pleaded with him no matter how impossible my request, and so he stepped through the air and left me alone to wonder what could have been had I met him before the accident,a process that took me a relatively short period of time, and then I was back in the streets watching the blind stumble and seeing the lights go out in buildings and the streetlights grow dim while I wandered around with no destination, merely exploring and hoping perhaps to find him again, but knowing that he was far away from me, and I wondered what had caused this act of god, what had brought this event upon us without warning, because there certainly was no apparent cause that I could point my fingers at and easily label, which did not surprise me because one can not expect to create meaning from something so tremendous, as if it were possible to understand the vastness of the ocean or the birth of a mountain, and I was left with the feeling of ever expanding warmth within my chest just pushing through into my arms and legs and deeper into the ventricles and ganglion nerves as if a warm blanket was being wrapped around me as I fell asleep, but without any sense as to what planted the feeling inside me, so that I could merely shake my head back and forth as I wound my way among the buildings that had turned themselves into island towers amid still waters, and I remembered the space of nothing that seemed to unfold itself in the middle of the street in front of our bus and that moment in which I saw him first step through the air and onto the street, if I had truly seen
