Back when there were people around, I would blow my moped through town, then ride on and dart between bales of alfalfa. Neighbors called me the crazy crazy daughter of the wind. Folks would hoot, say I had the long legs of a showjumper or a sawhorse. The farmer would yell ‘Hold onto your hat, orphan girl!’ because it would always be taking off my head like a biplane. But none of them ever really cared about me. I was never anybody’s kid. I saw a cow get kidnapped, and they thought I was a joke.
That’s part of why I left.
But don’t you worry about me and where I have gone. I am not alone; by my side is Yuri Gagarin, the self-taught choctaw hog. He is very intelligent. Whenever he answers an aftermath equation, I feed him whole peaches or a chocolate bar. And when he rides in the sidecar, his pig ears slap behind him in the breeze. He is my best friend.
Together, we have moved on from this old place. If you ever really need to find us, I have written down a list of new possible motherlands. We are liable to be in one of these necks of the woods:
- THE U.S.S.R.
- BHARAT MATA
- THE CENTER OF THE EARTH
Yeah, me and Yuri have got it all figured out. We have attached red lift-off balloons to the handlebars of the moped. We are abducting ourselves and will be dancing into the sky. This is all just the big flipside of a coin; our next new quarter-century. We are ready. As I jot this down, Yuri is cinching the cord of his straw hat all snug and close to his broom-bristle chinny-chin.
Too often people make excuses for each other. The excuse for me was ‘Nutjob’. If you are reading this letter, you just might be the third to last person in the world, behind a girl and her hog. And if you’re not sure what happened, having found yourself in the smoking leftovers of a hick-town, all you need to know is the excuses play catch-up. Some parents got a habit of getting themselves gone.
So. Next time you see something in the sky, it might just be me and the old cosmonaut pig.
Go ahead. Give us a shout.
My name is Ballerina Hayseed. I am your damn-near unidentifiable flying object.