Free Mayflies by Sara Veglahn

Prologue
    I N THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS WATER . Just a trickle, nothing more. Soon rain and more rain, and later: a flood. In time, the water shifted from a small still pool and embraced gravity. It moved in a line over rocks and trees and cities and towns. A whole world covered in water. A whole world outside the water.
    The river gained speed and coursed through the valley it had made. What started as a clear stream merged into something muddy and full of catfish and mayflies and other things that fell and disappeared into the dark water.
    In the beginning, a mayfly has no wings. She lies buried until it is time to emerge. Once she reaches the surface and removes herself from the mud, she is altered.
    In dreams, I walk through mud. I fall into it and feel changed. My ladies are always there, as they are always here with me now.
    I began as a girl. She began as me.
    I pull myself up and out and stand with water streaming from my limbs and hair. I am a fountain. The ancient story of girls who followed each other one by one into the river and never came back is repeated until the story becomes a story of only one girl who follows nothing and goes into the river alone.
    This is how that story goes:
    I walk through the streets at dawn. A thick fog hovers here and there.
    At dawn, I am out on the street, my pace steady, my shoes sharp clacking on the pavement. There is no one else.
    The river comes into view only as I reach it. It’s summer, and there’s a damp heat rising from the patch of grass where I now stand. The water laps against the heavy black rocks. It is nearly time for the mayfly hatching.
    Until I reach it, the river is invisible.
    She is here and I am her.
    My wings emerge damp and fragile.
    She carries herself down to the water.
    My captors, my saviors, myself.
    The world outside.
    Nothing changes.
    It is unclear where the water ends when everything is water.
    Her outline makes a shadow against the wall. It moves with the cool breeze that comes in through the window. A situation of disappearance. No one knows where she’s gone and she isn’t sure either. Solid ground, yes, but slippery and moveable. She is scattered across the floor.
    I see her there and begin to gather the fragments.
    I am here.
    Can you see?
    Look into the water. My face makes many faces.
    And there is this day, right now.
    There is the day before and the day to come.
    There is each day.

The Mayflies

    E ACH DAY WE PULL OURSELVES OUT OF THE RIVER . The streets and sidewalks are marked with a trail of our damp footprints, yet we are nowhere to be found. We sing all of the old songs, march in a line like children. At night, in summer, our steam rises. You believe you see a hand emerge from the water, a dark soaked head of hair that turns toward you. You think you see us in windows and doorways, in dining halls and tea rooms. We are there, beside you but we are not there. We are there beside you and we are there and not. We are always there beside you.

    A new moon. The kind seen in daytime. A chance of snow or freezing rain. The heat wave was predicted to last several more weeks, and the newly hatched mayflies covered everything. In meadows, crickets formed their songs. In the songs, a train from far away, an ear pressed to the rails. Something sloshing. All of the ladies in their Egyptian costumes were standing on the balustrades, their arms and hands making sharp angles. Hundreds of ladies and hundreds of angles.
    I moved through corridors. Blood to blood. No light. Lost.
    A motorcycle or car raced to where someone would pull me out, sticky and wet. A bus or train was racing there, where someone, I don’t know who, pulled me out. I was no longer attached to my mother. I was no longer attached to my father.

    Before everything, there are first things. Small high window views. Her little prison when she was small and waiting. She saw everything that she saw. A mistake in wanting. Everyone waving where she could monster. Throw