Читать книгу Tiny - Mairead Case - Страница 13

18

T I N Y

Tiny looked, looks, will look at death for so long that she isn’t afraid of it anymore. She stared at death so long it could have opened its eyes back, suddenly in the dark. It could have made everything that wasn’t Tiny into darkness too, like a girl waking up inside a whale in the ocean. But it didn’t. And so, at first in a rushed lurch and then normal, as always, Tiny lives.

This is a responsibility. She takes it very seriously.

When living feels impossible, Tiny looks at the pictures of sheep, orchids, bees, lemurs, jellyfish, coral reefs, seals, moss, and microbes she drew inside of her mother’s lab notebook in watercolor pencil. Tiny presses her hands into roofs, chair cushions, and the earth. She spreads out her fingers and pushes them flat, like she’s about to arc into a handstand. A rainbow. Tiny drinks water and imagines her lungs full of color. She breathes out, imagining that color filling the room.