Friday, October 23, 2009

paper cranes


"I knew a girl who made paper cranes. Tiny ones. Colorful ones. She put each crane into a bottle, filled it up, then began to fill another. I remember seeing these bottles all lined up in no particular order, but she remembered when each one was made, which one was oldest. I had asked her what she wished for, because by then, she made over a thousand. She didn't look up as she finished a fold and dropped it down a long slender neck of a clear glass bottle. I don't wish for anything. Why not, I asked. Her eyes met mine as she said, because, what if it comes true? Later, I heard she disappeared, but not after she crashed each bottle broken onto the concrete sidewalk. The cranes lay, scattered along with broken glass. Some scene it must have been. She let me choose one of the bottles to take. She said I understood. I look at my bottle now, the multicolored cranes, once beautiful and alive seem trapped in such a cramped space, one on top of the other. I thought it wrong not to let the cranes free..."

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