The Girl in the Jumper

She likes to feel but she can’t speak of emotion. She senses summer in her limbs like paper flowers and origami swans, clustering in the delight of creation’s little voodoo hands. In her jumper’s pocket she carries a single sunflower seed in hopes of setting it free, because free is where the heart is when the mind relinquishes its uncertainty. The sunflower has never known sunshine, but that’s all it has ever dreamed of. Freedom through expression, freedom through the media – freedom through the sunshine. These are concrete forms of freedom.

The girl in the jumper always dreamed of freedom, but never in a concrete form. Freedom can’t be contained in simple wishes, wants or needs – it is formed in the heart in a moment of colour, or at least that’s what she’s always heard.

Her gentle, graceful footsteps cover vast amounts of earth in small amounts of time, and she finds herself gasping for breath as she tries to outrun the night. The sunflower seed wants sunlight and sunlight it shall have – it’s not hers to prevent this love. But love needs somewhere beautiful to sprout, bloom and blossom – she must leave the empty, harsh plains where her consciousness once thrived.

A tower stands before her and it bows in the yawn of night. Suddenly she’s running through an endless forest and her jumper catches on the biting branches as they reach for her wrists and snake around her ankles. She feels pinpricks of moisture seep through her pores and she tells herself it’s sweat. Meanwhile, the forest fumbles brilliantly as though holding her would keep her close, but somewhere deep down she’s always known that maybe there’s something more to her than just physical sensations. Admitting this, she plummets headfirst over the edge of the forest and searches blindly for the sun.

The air roars as she rockets by and she almost laughs because the prospect of her falling any farther than where she’d been before seemed impossible only moments ago. She smiles and bids the forest farewell, guiltily admitting that maybe she likes falling just a bit better than reason tells her she should.

She plunges headfirst into a stream that licks her body and fills her lungs with crystal shards of icy wetness – breathing has never hurt quite so well. Struggling, she sputters a half-hearted goodbye as she gasps for air or something like it, all the while wondering how many final goodbyes the forest had witnessed.

She washes up on shore, and the gasping, gaping bodies of grounded fish greet her with a scent that is reminiscent of her childhood, though she has never lived near a stream. Dusting herself from head to foot to keep herself from shivering, she shifts her weight from foot to foot, and before she realizes it she’s on her way again – the night is falling fast away.

She’s been running for a while when she spots a lovely place – the soil winks at her and asks her to bury freedom, and who is she to disagree? This is where the sunflower seed should be buried – it is here that it shall be free. Freedom in the soil, freedom in the sun – the sunflower will bury its roots and bind itself to freedom. She never wonders why it must be buried to be free.

The soil is shifted clumsily by her calloused hands; she is accustomed to such work. She digs a hole and tears well up in her eyes – there’s a burning, blossoming feeling that’s spreading through her fingers as her flesh brushes the seed. Something vague slips away from her and passes into oblivion before she can comprehend its meaning (except, she thinks, maybe this is what healing feels like).

If healing scalds her delicate heart then she’s been freezing all her life – she has never known sun. It is grace, colour and form; it flickers, flashes, fades. If feeling is forever, then what is this blooming, bleeding sensation? The sun tickles her neck and the breeze fills her lungs with overwhelming sweetness as it giggles a response: it’s the human condition. It’s a part of feeling, but so much more.

The sunflower is falling, falling, falling with all the importance of tomorrow. The girl briefly wonders what it would be like to shut her eyes and dream of something deeper than feeling. She could fall asleep forever in a little soil bed, rising for the sun – long live the dreamer! Long live the dream!

The sunflower’s impact reverberates across the earth; a cloud of dust rises and mingles with the world above – something it has never known. A tear slips off the girl’s nose and falls silently towards the sunflower’s little dirt bed.

“Goodbye,” cries the girl as though the sunflower seed was her lover, her friend and her life. The blooming, bleeding sensation spreads eagerly towards her toes – why does healing burn? She’s drowning in the soil, and her hungry lungs suck in the cool air – Good Bye. Good-Bye. Good bye, goodbye, goodbyegoodbye – why can’t she feel anything but goodbye?

“Oh, I wish I could feel –”

but she already feels so much:

hope. serenity. grace. love. colour.

forever.

The sunflower seed is finally buried and resting. Somehow it has found freedom.

“Goodbye,” whispers the girl to the dirt on her hands, the birds, the sky, and herself – but mostly she whispers to the little sunflower seed. It is their final farewell.

She rises and dusts off her jumper, then dutifully shoves her hands into her jumper’s pockets. She is free once more. Almost absently (but not quite) she begins to whistle a tune she’s not heard before. She casts her gaze towards the sky: there lies infinity. There lies her heart, clean as the new fallen snow. She has spent so much time in the low places.

It is time for something new – it is time for –

“Hello.”

Blue Eyes meets Purple Jumper, and hellos are forever.