On Birdseye

Máire Fisher, Birdseye

- I must have been the only girl in town who looked for her real parents in their wardrobes. My father's left-behind clothes, mothballed for eternity. My mother's - row upon row of bright suits, dresses, gowns. Pumps, and open-toed sandals. -

- By the time I was born, four years later, everything had run out. The last to go had been hope, waving a final goodbye, as Annie learned she was pregnant with me. -

- My dreams weren't what frightened me. It was waking up from them...-

- I learned to deny who I was, creating a person totally unlike myself. I learned to squash my thirst for knowledge, my longing to let stories spill out of me. -

- And then, if what she sees and hears pleases her, she bends a little lower, sucks our dreams away and leaves us flat and empty. -