If You Want To Be A Trapeze Artist By Alina Stefanescu

If you want to be a trapeze artist, you have to start carving out a niche early. Start with stilts at a neighborhood bbq when you are eight. Start referring to twine to as a tool and to your pinky fingers as reliable implements. Start steeling yourself against the sharp sting of shins scraping blacktop because there is more. Skinned knees are precursors. Your first orgasm behind the cherry oak dresser is only a fragment of things to come.

Your parents will likely cross their arms and say that you’re so good with numbers, why not be a math person, why not make a career of it. Your parents will use the word career like a chainsaw blurring too close to your exposed earlobe. You will have to say no thank you. You will have to say I’ll consider it. You may have to lie in earnest. Ultimately, you will be forced to hiss: Put that word away.

And: The way you swing that noun is dangerous.

And: Can I have ice-skating lessons as my birthday present this year?

Friends will make fun of you in the school parking lot. After a while, they will come to accept the things you say. At worst, they may blush and look away.

Friends will encourage you to down shots of Jägermeister and cultivate crushes.

Friends will say, isn’t so and so soooooooooooo cute, and I think he likes you.

Friends will say you’re lucky when a senior linebacker invites you to prom.

Friends will say you’re psycho when you turn down the senior for a circus-tent magic show.

But you will know better.

Aren’t you the one who wants to be a trapeze artist?

Aren’t you the one who wakes up with feathers stiff around your shoulder blades?

You are.

Yes, you are the one who ties herself to the headboard so that the girl with wings can’t do anything crazy. Like maybe fly the fuck away.

© 2016 Alina Stefanescu

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania, raised in Alabama, and reared by the love-ghost of Tom Waits and Hannah Arendt. Among her pivotal accomplishments remains the moment when her second grade teacher at Holy Spirit Catholic School told Alina’s parents that she had “potential.” Despite her lack of Catholicism.

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