Invisibility

I should have told him, “Jeremiah, I do not wish for a tall sky. It is too overwhelming and can make a person feel even smaller than how they already feel. It diminishes them almost to invisibility. I will be a wife, and a mother if that’s meant to be, but I cannot be invisible. Too much of myself has been invisible, or unlovely. Of the two, I would rather be unlovely. So take me to a small place, where the sky is a blanket rather than this infinite breadth, and let me be safe for a while, away from the hugeness that awaits us all. Be my tall and I’ll be your small, and when the world turns cold, we will have each other to hold back the heartache.”

And that is what I should have told him. Some people are not meant to live under a tall sky.

Excerpt from the forthcoming novel A Very Tall Summer