She was born in the usual way–between a man and a woman.  There was blood, pain, and screaming. It was, as it always is, a brutal cleaving of soul from soul, flesh from flesh. Her father was a crime, her mother a child, and there was no one to catch her when, after years of slow, uncomfortable gestation, she finally fell into damp leaves on a darkened forest floor.

Her mother lays there still, not one minute past the memory.

She didn’t realize her birth was a death. She never grieved; how do you miss someone you never knew? But She felt the weight of grief all around her from the moment she was born in such a way that it was like gravity or some other universally accepted law of physics– binding her to earth, limiting her ability to move, and at the time, intensifying her need to dream.