The music was already turning sad, echoing,
twisting. The booth workers stuffed the bears
into their boxes, unclasped the banners,
greyed out carousel lights. The way you tell it,
I am eleven, and I am in love
with a stuffed bear prize, I am narrowing my eyes
as the Ferris wheel whirls neon
onto your lips. We mirror each other:
trick-mirror. You my mother, a little taller,
a little kinder at the eyes. You glance at the sky,
and then I am sprinting to the lights; I climb up
to the control deck, leap
into the Ferris wheel, set the machine hurtling
to the ground, screaming up:
eleven years old and already accustomed
to a glass body. You see the bear first,
then my hands, then the headlines smash
through your head: Child stuck on a Ferris wheel,
breaks her arm, her nose, her leg. I wave at you,
grinning wide and reckless: the way you tell it,
you sprint to the wheel, jump six feet
and catch the car at the bottom. You grab my hand,
and suddenly we are the lucky ones,
the world pales and shudders around us,
then stops completely. The bear comes alive
to throw its arms to the moon. The way you tell it,
we wait for the wheel to graze the ground,
struck reverently silent by the presence of whatever it was:
the slow music that conjured magic and light
and childhood, the power that made dreams briefly real,
the way you paused, thinking of all those ghosts,
then floated out of frame.
twisting. The booth workers stuffed the bears
into their boxes, unclasped the banners,
greyed out carousel lights. The way you tell it,
I am eleven, and I am in love
with a stuffed bear prize, I am narrowing my eyes
as the Ferris wheel whirls neon
onto your lips. We mirror each other:
trick-mirror. You my mother, a little taller,
a little kinder at the eyes. You glance at the sky,
and then I am sprinting to the lights; I climb up
to the control deck, leap
into the Ferris wheel, set the machine hurtling
to the ground, screaming up:
eleven years old and already accustomed
to a glass body. You see the bear first,
then my hands, then the headlines smash
through your head: Child stuck on a Ferris wheel,
breaks her arm, her nose, her leg. I wave at you,
grinning wide and reckless: the way you tell it,
you sprint to the wheel, jump six feet
and catch the car at the bottom. You grab my hand,
and suddenly we are the lucky ones,
the world pales and shudders around us,
then stops completely. The bear comes alive
to throw its arms to the moon. The way you tell it,
we wait for the wheel to graze the ground,
struck reverently silent by the presence of whatever it was:
the slow music that conjured magic and light
and childhood, the power that made dreams briefly real,
the way you paused, thinking of all those ghosts,
then floated out of frame.
Gaia Rajan lives in Andover, MA. She's the Poetry Editor of The Courant and the EIC of The Tavern. Her work has previously appeared in Mineral Lit Mag, Kissing Dynamite, Glass Poetry, Eunoia Review, Write the World, and elsewhere. When not writing, she's making artsy moodboards, listening to industrial pop, or drinking far too much tea.