Waiting
The little girl sat on the stoop and looked out across the flat land to the place where the sun sat half circle on the horizon. She waited. She wanted to feel the earth turn.
She heard yesterday that the sun did not really rise in the sky. “The sun neither rises nor sets,” her teacher said. “It stays still, and the earth rolls around it.”
“But I have seen the sun move,” the little girl insisted.
The teacher shook her head and smiled. “It is just an illusion.”
All that night, so upset by what the teacher said, the little girl could not sleep.
And so she took herself out onto the stoop and waited.
But try as she might to feel the earth turn, she did not. “Why can’t I feel the earth move?” She called up to the sky.
When no answer came, she ran inside the house and threw herself on her bed. She cried. “What’s wrong with me?” Her muffled, sobbing voice called into her pillow. “I cannot feel what others say is true.” The idea bothered her so much that she tried to bury her head in the covers, dark and forever. But the morning sunrays through her window lit the room so brightly, she had to sit up and take notice.
So she got up from her bed and went back to the stoop. She let her legs dangle over the edge. The sun sat higher in the sky now.
She waited.
Sooner or later, she would feel the turning. It was just a matter of time.
The concrete of the stoop felt hot under her hands as she leaned on them. She tilted her face up and into the sun. She did. She rose right into it.
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