Levitation
Marjorie Manwaring
She enters in darkness; he forgot to turn on the porchlight again. Walks in, down the
hallway, sees him haloed in blue tele-light, eating popcorn in the Barcalounger. He turns
to her. You look pale--levitation again?
Yes, sets her keys on top of the TV.
How far up this time? He holds out the bowl, she shakes her head.
Three feet--he's written some new spells. She smells envy, sits.
Loud chewing. Tell me what it's like again.
The floating—it's almost unnoticable, like lying on a really comfortable bed, and—she
hesitates—the music.
Hmmm? His jaw pops.
A faint— singing. The butterflies.
Questioning look, slow swallow.
Butterflies, he keeps them about, wings, cocoons, for potions. When I go up, they fly
alongside. And… sing.
Well, I've never heard of... Like birds?
More like crickets, or frogs. The magician says animals can sense transformation. But it's
only me who hears them. Eye contact. You mean he can't? Chewing stops.
Just me—he says it's part of the altered state.
I was in an altered state once. Big swallow.
She remembers. Yes.
No butterflies though.
No, she kneels down next to him, head in his lap, no butterflies.
© 2006 Marjorie Manwaring
Marjorie Manwaring lives in Seattle, where she is a freelance editor and fact-checker. Her work has appeared in 5 AM, Sentence, Four Corners, In Posse Review, and other journals, and she was a semifinalist in the 2005 "Discovery"/The Nation contest.
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