A girl two steps beyond me waits in line for the ski lift. She is at least ten years younger than I am. I watch her share rainbow candies with the smaller girl next to her, with whom she bickers; I assume they are sisters. They argue about the size of the sour ribbons that stretch like lizard tongues and how many are left in the bag.
To my left is my mother, to my right my boyfriend, and behind me are my father and brother. It is 2025 now.
The girl in front of me takes another bright belt and places it between her teeth. She pulls the candy left, turning her head right. My first thought is that she could seriously hurt her teeth that way. Snow tangles the black hair pooling in her jacket hood. Her sister’s palms are open like oysters. I watch her small jaw tense as she chews.
I wonder if she’ll outgrow the artificial taste of rainbow, and if it will happen because she learns to read the label or because palates naturally change. I wonder what sport she’ll play and if it will affect the way she sees herself. Will she like school? Will a man love her one day? How will she know?
Maybe he will squeeze her soft biceps when she flexes the little muscle she has and pretend to have hurt his hand. Or perhaps he will retrieve her index finger when it tries to pull the skin off of her thumb. He might have a sister fond of trinkets. Maybe he will ask the flight attendant for water, knowing she’ll want it when she wakes up. Will she know he loves her by the words he says or by the ones he doesn’t?
I spend the evening playing Barbies with my cousin’s daughters and I ask them their favorite colors. One tells me pink and yellow, and the other blue--“like the sky.” As we speak I notice my voice has risen to a wholly unnatural pitch and I can’t remember when I stopped liking the taste of rainbow and naming sky blue my favorite color. I can’t remember, suddenly, how I got here… “here,” not to a cold Utah, but to 2025.
In the last year, my curls fell nearly straight because of a change in my hormones. I began writing “have done” lists as obsessive as my “to do” ones. I burnt the side of my face twice and the scar started to fade only when I used my prescription cream instead of one gifted by a friend. I found I won’t wear headphones in an elevator, even when only with strangers (it feels rude). I wrote, and wrote often--including letters, poems, and a short book for a man who loves me by squeezing my barely-there muscles. In Nashville I shared a home with sisters (including one that lives a few floors down). In Miami my best friends loved me the same way they have since first grade, if not earlier.
It is 2025 now and this year is as glossy and new and empty as the last. It is 2025 now and, still, I will be older or younger than someone who stands beyond or behind me in line. It is 2025 now and there are habits I have that I didn’t before, and that fact will make me sad as often as it will make me joyous.
But in 2025 there will be a man who contorts in his airplane seat to keep my nose from bleeding. There will be a family to hold me up and friends inviting me to sit on the edge of their bed and tell them about my afternoon.
There will be texture and color and I will spend my days writing lists--of what there is to look forward to, what I need to do, what I have done, what I got out of bed for this morning. There will be resolutions I intend to make–like cooking with recipes or remembering to play my guitar– but never get around to.
This year will be good. I will be lucky. And, when it’s over, this will be true: I won’t know how I got here or in what corners the time burrows, I will be older or younger than someone else, I will know a little more, I will have lived a little fuller. That’s good enough for me.
in 2025 i am happy i get to read beautiful words from a beautiful person :)