The Woman Who Fell From The Sky by Joy Harjo
Once a woman fell from the sky. The woman who fell from the sky was neither murderer nor a saint. She was rather ordinary, though beautiful in her walk, like one who has experienced freedom from earth’s gravity. When I see her I think of an antelope grazing the alpine meadows in mountains whose names are as ancient as the sound that created the first world.
Saint Coincidence thought he recognized her as she began falling toward him from the sky in a slow spin, like the spiral of events marking an ascension of grace. There was something in the curve of her shoulder, a familiar slope that led him into the lightest moment of his life.
He could not bear it and turned to ask a woman in high heels for a quarter. She was of the family of myths who would give everything if asked. She looked like all the wives he’d lost. And he had nothing to lose anymore in this city of terrible paradox where a woman was falling towards him from the sky.
The strange beauty in heels disappeared from the path of Saint Coincidence, with all her money held tightly in her purse, into the glass of advertisement. Saint Coincidence shuffled back onto the ice to watch the woman falling and falling.
Saint Coincidence, who was not a saint, perhaps a murderer if you count the people he shot without knowing during the stint that took his mind in Vietnam or Cambodia—remembered the girl he yearned to love when they were kids at India boarding school.
He could still see her on the dusty playground, off in the distance, years to the west past the icy parking lot of the Safeway. She was a blurred vision of the bittersweet and this memory had forced him to live though the violence of fire. There they stood witness together to strange acts of cruelty by strangers, as well as the surprise of rare kindnesses.
The woman who was to fall from the sky was the girl with skinned knees whose spirit knew how to climb to the stars. Once she told him the stars spoke a language akin to the plains of her home, a
Saint Coincidence thought he recognized her as she began falling toward him from the sky in a slow spin, like the spiral of events marking an ascension of grace. There was something in the curve of her shoulder, a familiar slope that led him into the lightest moment of his life.
He could not bear it and turned to ask a woman in high heels for a quarter. She was of the family of myths who would give everything if asked. She looked like all the wives he’d lost. And he had nothing to lose anymore in this city of terrible paradox where a woman was falling towards him from the sky.
The strange beauty in heels disappeared from the path of Saint Coincidence, with all her money held tightly in her purse, into the glass of advertisement. Saint Coincidence shuffled back onto the ice to watch the woman falling and falling.
Saint Coincidence, who was not a saint, perhaps a murderer if you count the people he shot without knowing during the stint that took his mind in Vietnam or Cambodia—remembered the girl he yearned to love when they were kids at India boarding school.
He could still see her on the dusty playground, off in the distance, years to the west past the icy parking lot of the Safeway. She was a blurred vision of the bittersweet and this memory had forced him to live though the violence of fire. There they stood witness together to strange acts of cruelty by strangers, as well as the surprise of rare kindnesses.
The woman who was to fall from the sky was the girl with skinned knees whose spirit knew how to climb to the stars. Once she told him the stars spoke a language akin to the plains of her home, a