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You Cannot Mess This Up: A True Story That Never Happened

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Amy Weinland Daughters

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“Life was like being dragged through concrete in circles, wet and setting concrete that dried with each rotation of my unwilling body. As a child, I was light. It didn’t matter too much; I slid through it, and maybe it even felt like a game, like I was just playing in mud, like nothing about that slipperiness would ever change, not really. But then I got bigger and it started drying on me and eventually I turned into an uneven block, chipping and sparking on the hard ground, tearing off into painful chunks.”

“Oh scattered band, once my playmates, you few Who were amidst the gardens here and there in the city, How hesitantly we located one another, took fancies and Like the tapestry lamb whose mute words are on a scroll, Spoke through silence. Our little joys were Never communicated, - Whose indeed were they? And among all the passers-by, those hurriers, how it all Evanesced quite away, weighed down by the torment of the endless year. Past us were drawn the carriages, wholly indifferent, Round us the houses stood strong but not real, - and none Of these were aware of us. What was truly real in it all? Nothing. Only the balls we tossed, their magnificent arcs, But certainly not the children. ... Though sometimes one would step - Alas, one who would soon be lost, - beneath a falling ball.”

“We are all children, they thought, and none of us is equipped to deal with such an adversary. We go through life under other people's protection. We listen to instructions and try to follow them. We don't know what's true and what's not. What's fair and unfair. Our world is small. Our world is narrow. We do as we are told.”

“Why raise children on the promise of magic? Why create a want in them that can never be satisfied - for revelation, for transformation - and then set them adrift in a bleak, pragmatic world? In Darlington she'd seen what grief over that loss could do to someone, but maybe that same mourning lived inside her too. The terrible knowledge that there would be no secret destiny, no kindly mentor to see some hidden talent inside her, no deadly nemesis to best.”