The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

by Heidi W. Durrow

It’s easy to smile just to make other people feel better. But when a person fakes happy, it has edges. Regular people may not see, but the people who count, they can see edges and lines where your smile ends and the real you, the sadness (me) or the anger (Grandma), begins. The lines and edges are gone from Aunt Loretta when Drew is around. And the picture of Uncle Nathan on the mantel is gone too — the one where he’s leaning into Aunt Loretta and it looks as if he can’t get the question off his face. That’s a good thing, I think. You shouldn’t hold onto things that give you edges. Now there’s more light inside Aunt Loretta, inside light that other people can see too.

We lie to ourselves in many ways; we write down only what we want to understand and what we want to see.