Pilot Light

I was eight years old when Esperanza fell off the swing. In the backyard, she stood on a flimsy piece of wood, rotted from many rains and held together by two strings, rocking her body back and forth. While she reveled in her weightlessness, I sensed impending catastrophe. From my spot safely in the grass, I pleaded with her to stop. Barely hearing my pleas, she rose higher, closer to the sun with each swing. I turned away from her. Bracing myself, I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears. She called out to me, determined to show me that if she swung high enough, she could see above the hedges separating our yard from the neighbors, above all the rooftops neatly lining around the cul-de-sac, to somewhere even more distant. Perhaps she even believed that she could reach back in time, back across the ocean, to her childhood in the Philippines. So she swung, higher and higher and higher.