Do you believe in fairies?

Every night before bed, you would tell me a story from your childhood. Tales of the time you rode on the backs of elephant trees and drank from the blueness of the sky, or when you had a quiet tea party with the toadstools and braided vines of ivy. You took naps on patches of moss and learned how to sew from the tulips. But perhaps my favorite story was about the time you met the wish fairy.

Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to meet a fairy. Do you remember how I used to make hotels for them out of old cans of beans and place them in the little cigarette bud ridden box of dirt by the stairs amidst the concrete that surrounded our home? I never had much of a green thumb, the useless Mother’s Day flowers they forced me to take home from school always died the moment I tried to plant them, dollar store seed packets never sprouted no matter how much I watered them. I used to crouch down close to the weed ridden cracks and ask the clovers and the dandelions to tell the fairies to come visit me.

Do you remember when I lifted up a rock and picked up all the worms, millipedes, ants and pillbugs and put them in a jar? I had hoped they’d somehow lead me to the secret island where you had spent your youth.

That only resulted in a lecture from you on how all life is precious and should be treated with respect.

It’s on days like these when I think about you, when the sky is wrapped in a blanket of clouds and bellows with anticipation. More than when the sun shines bright and birds sing sweet tunes. More than when I take a hike into the forest and sketch the characters from those bedtime stories you told so long ago.

I used to think you were the greatest person who ever lived. You were always there for me, aways was so kind, always seemed to know just what I needed. You consoled me when people laughed at me for believing in fairies. You stood your ground when people told you that you shouldn’t raise a girl alone without a mother.

But now, sitting here with grass stained jeans, I can’t help but think of you as nothing more than a liar and a fucking coward.

As I grew up, I so desperately wished to know the truth. I wished to know why you ran away from your childhood island. If I had a mother or if I was adopted. Why all of the DNA tests I took came back with some unknown error. If those stories from your childhood were real.

But you never told me the truth, not in any records or writings or will. No known friends or family to make any revelations once you passed. You did nothing but lie and hide things. Just like you hid the disease from me until it was too late.

And now the truth is gone forever.

The wish fairy collects wishes in clouds. People’s hopes, their dreams, their deepest desires. She’s the only fairy that has ever left the island, barely seen by the naked eye. She’s the one who brings sweet dreams to children, uses nightmares to scare people into action. She’s the melody in a musician’s song, the photographer’s perfect angle, the vibrant colors in an artist’s pallet. But with every sigh of defeat the clouds grow darker. Everytime someone fails to find the motivation or settles with disappointment, their world grows a little more dull, and the clouds grow heavier.

When a person gives up on their dreams the wishes fall like rain.

You told me you met the wish fairy once when you had a desire so strong that you flew up into the clouds. She’d given you a seed and when you planted it, it bloomed into the most beautiful creature you had ever seen.

I always wished to know what it was.

The clouds glow with flashes of lightning, thunder roaring soon after. I don’t care about my drenched clothes or how frizzy my hair will be or the cold that will come soon after. I don’t care that the rain mixes with my tears until I can’t distinguish one from the other.

If wishes fell like rain, then certainly I am a storm.