When she was very young, she imagined herself soaring through the skies, flapping her wings through salmon-coloured clouds, zip-zapping between hot air balloons. “Oh, darling, you’re not a bird!” her Ma chuckled, watching from the verandah. “Come quick and help me out!”

“My dear,” her teacher said one afternoon, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” A dancer, maybe. Or a biologist. Or a mountain climber. Some kind of adventurer. The ideas swirled in her head, one replacing the next just as quickly. “Or perhaps a teacher,” her father chimed in approvingly. “Will give her time to look after her family.”

When Salma stayed the night, the fingers traced along her skin, following the stretch marks spiraling across her hips and back like mandalas. One day, as her hands reached farther than they should have, Ma barged in, cursing and thumping her chest, crying for five days straight.

_She wasn’t even supposed to leave Salma; she had promised._

When she came home with scuffed knees from climbing trees or running, her grandmother frowned, “You’ll never find a husband if you keep behaving like that!”
So, she swapped her spirit for careful steps, sat with her legs crossed, hands neatly in her lap, never laughing too loudly.

When she grew up a little and wanted to study far from home, dreaming of a different world, her uncle said, “A woman doesn’t go too far from her family. You’ll get married soon, and your husband can decide what’s best.” She spent her days in the kitchen, preparing to make her way into a man’s heart.

_She wasn’t even supposed to marry; she had long ago cried to Ma._

When her father refused to send his younger daughters to school because he squandered every penny in some game, she protested. “Men don’t like women who talk too much,” her aunt said, “you should know when to speak and when to keep quiet.” And so, she learned to hold back her thoughts, just like she learned to pull her dress to hold it down to her ankles. She listened and listened and listened till every word settled thick in her bones. She married and had three kids. Girls. A gulch formed where the heart used to be.

_She wasn’t even supposed to have children; she had long ago promised herself._

When she was very old, she tried to stay busy, picking up odd hobbies like gardening and telling the beads of her rosary, but she often forgot little things—the names of her plants, her glasses, the rosary. Every day, it seemed she forgot more important things, like her husband’s name, old friends’ faces, or how to get to places she once knew. Salma.

Then, one crisp autumn afternoon, when she was walking along a woodland trail near her house, she forgot all the things Ma had once told her about being ‘good’ and ‘proper.’ She forgot that she wasn’t a bird. She stood there, arms outstretched to the wind, feeling the cool breeze ruffle her feathers and watching the leaves swirl around her in a golden trance.

And, for a fleeting moment, she remembered the thrill of flight.