It was a plain day. The sun sat inconspicuously in a sky of blue mottled with gray, the breeze blew without a scent, and the birds' chatter was as distant as the background sounds of traffic.

Luna walked down the street in a sleepy mood, her shoulder bag still at her side as her arms swung and her feet treaded softly down the pavement. She was heading to the park. She had a notebook under one arm and a pen on her belt, and words of poetry flew gracefully through her mind as she watched the swallows dip and dive around the weeping willows by the roadside.

She was soon walking the trail by the creek, her eyes watching the imaginary boat as it tumbled through the rapids beside her. Then she reached the bridge and stopped, waiting for the troll to show it. But when it did, she blinked a moment, yawned, and then it was gone.
Lying down under the maple tree by the blackberry bushes, she soon forgot her notebook and closed her eyes with a relaxed sigh.

She could see the sky clearly through her eyelids. The clouds drifted like continents in a sea of blue. They were forming another world. Her tired mind spun for a moment as she yawned tremendously, and then she felt the soft grass begin to fade away beneath her as she began to float into the sky.
She gave a smile as the maple boughs passed around her, tickling her from all sides. And then she was in the sky, heading for the distant continents, like a drifting melody of music.
The largest of the continents soon began to fill her view and the mountain peaks began to grow more distinct. A few beautiful moments later, the tree tops of a jungle began to grow closer. Finally she let out a laugh and began to descend with growing speed.

Through a flurry of leaves, she fell through the canopy, passing through a living kaleidoscope of greenery with a rush. Then she awoke on the forest floor with a jolt, amidst the great broad leafed plants of another world, a comforting trickle of water in the background and a warm mist floating overhead.
"I made it," she whispered.

The very best memory; the oldest one.  Still tasting of children and ringing with laughter and so vivid and so torturous, and so precious. 
The door was glazed; 70's opaque, with sliding panels and my grubby hand marks down one side.  I remember this detail as an introduction - such peculiar details.
There were friends there; so I must, once, have been surrounded and sought after.  Pink and white and fresh and soiled and sticky and blind with it all; a gaggle of girls

Dad was blind-folded, arms outstretched, grin on face, groaning; fake stumbling, clambering and gleeful childhood carelessness as we squealed, and tripped and feigned quiet, and silence and stillness.  Here he was, my world - and there we ran, from fireplace to stair foot to sink, to table; tripping over backward skipping feet, reaching out to brush open air and get-away.
But I wanted to be caught - scooped up, so that when he found me, the chosen one; the one claimed through eyes covered in cloth, he would lift me, trapped like a fish in a net and he would feel my weight - dense with pride, and love; my Dad.
That's what I remember, and always will, I hope. 

My net is tighter now, and the corpse cold - I know because I just kissed him, feeling scared and angry and alive (just like then) but now he has gone and I don't know what to do.  The glass door is closing and he is on the other side, and I want him to find me, and I want him to catch me and I am waiting quietly, in silence and stillness - but I know he can't choose me, and those other girls are ushered off stage and here I am; as the sirens fade, here I am. Alone.

The bus soared through the night as if it was flying, the road merely following beneath like a wave of black ribbon. Snowflakes in the headlights zipped by like stars, and the shadows on all sides constantly transformed as the driver silently turned the wheel from side to side, urging the life of the bus forever forward.

A persistent tapping sound at the top of the side door was a comfort to the silent passengers, some of which were dozing with their pillows against the cool windows.
I sat like in a dream, moving with the motion of the bus like with the gentle rocking of a boat. One thought was strong in my mind. I was next.

When next it stopped and the double doors opened with a whoosh of invigorating night air, it would be my turn. My turn to wake up from this dream. My turn to step off the bus into the night. Into the unknown.
Each passenger before me had gone without a word, stepping down into the darkness and looking about them with blinking innocence as the doors slid shut behind them. Then the engine would hum again and the capsule would accelerate back into the never-ending dream of flight.
But this time, I would be left behind.

I met a gypsy outside Eldon Square one bright Wednesday. She put her lucky heather away and pinned me to the window of a jeweler shop; I was weighed down with the end of love. Every word that left her lips flowed over rocks and I was mesmerized. ‘Stay away from the surface, you will only be distracted. Your fate lies in the ebb and flow of the waters of the earth.’ She reminded me of a poet the way she spaced and timed her phrases, seduced her ideas and instruction into my empty carcass and I don’t remember leaving or arriving home. ‘The piece of the puzzle you search for is never the color you think it is.’ Everything she said to me is imprinted on the front of my mind and I’ve been trying ever since to find that main river.

My mother was finally found in the arms of her lover, three years after their death. I was the one who wanted a real family, a birth mother to call my own and a paper-trail to prove my identity. I’ve got all that now, and family skeletons to beat all others. I wished I had photographs of this woman who had loved me for a month; she took the time to write a letter and stain it with tears – proof, she said, that I was created, and given away with love. I believe her, and know that she couldn’t possibly have known anything about love at the age of fourteen – my mother was a child!

We lived in the forest, she said; they’d run away from their families, knowing they’d be forced apart otherwise. I can imagine the wind and sunlight chasing through the canopy above our heads, and my father trying to light fires with damp matches. He was fifteen. This was my family, living a romantic life, starving in a strange, cold forest with a new baby crying, my mother crying, my young father crying. The sound of weeping would have echoed and slipped through the trees. At the first glimpse of winter she wrote the letter, carried me to the train station and as the train moved out she handed me to a woman leaning out of the open door window. How did she know that Mum prayed every night for a child?

 ‘Call me Tee,’ I said to the grandmother I’d never known, and she searched my thirty-year old face for the daughter she’d lost. 
 ‘I’m sorry to hear about your parents.’ She hadn’t taken her eyes from me. 
 ‘It was all in the diary, everything, and the letter.’ At first I couldn’t understand why Mum hadn’t told me that I was adopted. Reading her diary was like falling into an abyss and I didn’t know what to believe until the scrapbook turned up with newspaper clippings following the disappearance and discovery of the couple. I kept looking for the part where she told the authorities about me; she never did.

 This is the story of a boy, a boy with a dream. He spent many a night lying out under the heavens. He’d sometimes catch the glimpse of a shooting star glittering amongst the Big Dipper, other times he could sometimes make out a sparkle amongst The Twins. Little did he know the same sparkle that resonates within his eyes as deep a blue as a mid-summer morning and as green as a forest. His eyes would follow each and every movement with careful consideration and deliberation.

Every night that the stars could be seen, he’d look up at them for what seemed to be an eternity- eternity of compassion, and beauty, and art. These stars had names; names given to them from ancient civilizations, imbued with timeless stories of love, and power, and tragedy. These mythical expanses tell the tales of times long gone yet their meanings still intact. He stares up and wonders what else lay out there; unspoken, unheard, undreamed. He’d look up and the stars and wonder as if, by some miraculous consequence, he might glimpse the answers that troubled him. He was looking for answers of hope and love and passion of an otherworldly creation; hope and love and passion does not come easy in the world he lives – yet he believes.

His belief is rooted not in religion, or materials, or power, but in love- love that will uplift the world and boost the bonds of mankind to art and the Passions. Yet, he had always felt like something was missing. He troubled himself through careful examination of himself and the sky; that feeling deep inside was something of the universe.