Someone shared a story with me yesterday, a beautiful story she was told as a child by her grandmother about the power of words. When you say something to someone, her grandmother had said to her, imagine you're holding a fistful of soft feathers. Pretend the words are the feathers, and saying the words is like opening your hand to the wind. You can throw them as hard as you can to the wind, you can toss them as quickly as you know how and care. But once you've released them, once you've set them free, once you've opened your little hand and thrown the feathers to the wind, you'll never be able to get them all back. Try as hard as you might, wish as hard as you can, you can never get them all back.

***

Some of you know a little of what's going on with me right now. Thanks to all of you who have e-mailed, left voicemails, sent text messages, offered words of advice. I'm hurting, I'm upset, I'm disappointed and angry. I'm going through the days as best I can, putting on a happy face and laughing along with the rest of the world. But when like now the night begins to fall, when I'm to myself with little but the quiet of thought to distract me, when the subconscious of dream takes over as eyelids close at day's end, emotions get the best of me and I hurt.

***

I've been thinking since yesterday of the story I learned, about how beautiful and strikingly parallel the analogy. In my mind now there is the image of a little child, eyes wide open in uncertain wonder, hands outstretched to a determined wind. In the child's hand a few feathers stubbornly remain: hurtful words yet left unsaid. But in the distance, in the far off distance there they go--a hundred thousand of the softest, whitest feathers you ever saw, swirling and scattering, twirling and dancing their madcap dance, flying higher and higher and higher yet, and soaring, soaring so very much farther away.

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Friday evening on the Queensbound E, I manage to score a rare seat for the twenty-minute subway ride home. It's one of those two-passenger seats, the ones sandwiched between the end of the carriage and the exit to the platform. My seatmate, a beautiful and buxom young black woman with radiant skin and sparkling amber eyes sits upright, her lips a high-gloss fuschia and her hair done up in a dizzying sphere much too perfect for an end of week Friday. On her lap is a purple glass vase filled with bright red roses and stargazer lilies. I examine as discreetly as I can. Twelve plump roses and four stalks of lilies, with a tiny card tucked gingerly in a cluster of baby's breath. "To Afrodesia," it says, "From You Know Who. Sorry for You Know What." The woman smiles a triumphant smile and turns the card away ever so slightly.

That was two weeks ago.

Today on the train, I am not so lucky to get a seat, but Afrodesia is there again. We both stand, this time farther apart, I at one door, she at the next. Her radiance has refused to fade over the fortnight and I stare once more. She is cradling another vase of flowers, this one blue glass, these roses a pale and delicate yellow. There is a card tucked gingerly amidst the baby's breath. I am too far away to make out the words. Her hair, two weeks ago a giant afro is now straightened, cascading perfectly down her shoulders a silent waterfall of shimmering black. She is Afrodesia no more, but her smile remains mysterious and inscrutable, her stoicism undeniably triumphant. I glance at the flowers and wonder to myself: is You Know Who still seeking forgiveness for You Know What?

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Because he asked so nicely, because I'm desperately dodging the Big Poopy-Pants label, because this is the first time I've ever been tagged for a meme...


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