The Girl Whom Asked

I was only one once, or maybe I was three, a chorus of quiet girls stacked in the skin of me. I asked, and the world, without flinching, answered. No fairy-tale endings, no gentle edits. Just the pulse of truth, warm in the palm, like something alive. By five, I met Da Vinci in a picture book I didn’t fully understand but couldn’t stop staring at a man inside a circle, arms stretching past reason, telling me that I, too, was geometry made flesh. I was six when I bought a book about dogs giving birth not for the shock, but for the story. The cycle. The way life folded into itself and opened again. I was seven when I learned about black holes. Stephen Hawking’s voice spoke in star-stuff and silence. I didn’t know the math, but I knew the feeling: that some things are so powerful, they bend even light around their name. No one warned me the truth would be heavy. But it was never weight I feared. Only silence. Only being told not to ask. So I kept asking and the world, bless it, kept answering. lyssagal.com