BY LORIE WACKWITZ
Once upon a time, there was a young girl who was not so young as her years would suggest. Some said that she knew things. Felt things. Saw way beyond her years. But most people, most people condemned her for not fitting in, for not adjusting to the proper system of life. In some ways she couldn’t help but to condemn herself, for she knew that they were right—she didn’t fit it, nor, it seemed, would she ever. She stood on the outskirts, experienced the margins. Perhaps she was the margin.
Oh, she played their games well enough when she could stomach them, even got married once to a perfectly reasonable man. But still, wherever she went, in whatever company she kept, she was alone—even, she supposed, as a child, though she had never realized it. Her parents were wonderful, and she adored them as they adored her. But still there were worlds inside her that she never shared or even thought of sharing. They were private worlds full of longing, emotion, wonder, and solitude.
And then, as in all good fairy tales, one day she met someone who spoke to her and stepped ever so softly into the worlds of her imagination, the worlds where her heart lived and played, laughed and cried. After that, she began to realize how alone she had been all those years even when she had kept the best of company. She longed to be with him, to take him dancing in the moonlight near a rocky shore, to hold him in her arms and kiss him goodnight and good morning, to plant flowers and together to watch them grow. Only he wasn’t a “he.” And she wasn’t a “she.” Not the standard fairytale. But together . . . together they were a “they” and that made the world anew.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lorie Wackwitz is an author, editor, publisher, and filmmaker with lead editor responsibilities at two micro-presses. She writes from her island cottage in northern Michigan where her family maintains a private nature reserve.
The Green Shoe Sanctuary 