I had glimpses into it from the very beginning, really. It would strike me, suddenly, as I lay in bed, 3-year-old eyes wide, staring into the darkness. All air would exit my body, and the bed would start to spin, slowly, as though it were a hand on a clock, longitude, latitude, right, left, out, out, centrifuging me into a speck of dust. Further and further outside the room my imagination would travel; outside the house, past the woods, even past the post office, and I screamed, not wanting to be lost in the void, vacuumed away, dust forever. A child’s first taste of infinity, but no word for it yet, no concept…just internal organs shrinking, shrieking, into nothing.

“Night terrors,” my mother, a woman of British specificity and decision, declared, closing her child-rearing book with a satisfied thwump. “Leigh is having night terrors, and we must discuss it with her, but not to the point where she feels undue focus.” (My mother went years without realizing the conductive nature of the ventilation system. It wasn’t until well into my adolescence that she first heard the sound tunnel work in reverse.)

“I am so small,” was all I knew to say, “and it’s so, so big.”

She nodded. “Monsters. Hairy ones, I’ll bet, and slimy. Green-toothed insects—giant bugs—bees? With stingers? Oh, sweetheart,” she would cry, crinkle-browed, imagining the huge beasts of her own invention. How could I explain a monster that was just an enormous black expanse of space?

The day I turned 4 feet tall, the evening shrinkings dared to show their face during the day. Sitting at my first-grade desk, learning how to add one-digit numbers, it suddenly occurred to me—99 was not the largest number in the world. In fact, neither was 999. Horrified, I watched as the world around me collapsed. How could there be order in a world with no end? I contemplated sounding the fire alarm. The chain of nines escaped my head and started winding its way around my desk. I stood on it and started to scream, stomping at nines as they slithered over my shoes. “You can count and count, and it never ever ends. It never ends forever,” I ranted through my tears. Soylent Green is made of people!

At the parent-teacher conference, they suggested I had issues with growth. What? There are people who don’t have issues with growth? People enjoy leaving behind safety and everyone they love to blast off through the great expanse of black unknown? Impossible. Possible.

I met Jeremy in Illinois, senior year of college. “Hey there, Lovely Pie. You want to take a ride into a great expanse of black unknown?” “No. Um, no, thank you. I have this little closet I like. There’s wine there, and a big blanket. And a printer so you can put everything you write into file folders. Do you want to join me there?”

And he did join me, for a while. We knitted a sweatered cocoon to keep us safe from the cold Chicago wind and all its icy people. Then, one morning, I nuzzled out the end of my velvety, blanketed warmth, and…the printer, and my love, were nowhere to be found.

Squinting into the light, I was shocked to see him, printer strapped to his back, outside, dancing in the sun. Only he didn’t look like I remembered, and he wasn’t exactly dancing. Emerald wings, one on either side of my printer, spanned, blue-swirled and golden-tipped. Jeremy was flying. “Come back,” I called, trying to keep calm, imagining his beautiful, new wings getting sucked into forever. “I have a place…” I tried to make the hollow shell of blanket look inviting.

“Look at your back,” he trumpeted back. “It’s wonderful!”

I turned, looked. Plastered to my back were deflated blue garbage bags, sticky and wet. Dud wings, no doubt about it.

“You go on without me,” I said, trying not to sound like my mother. I’ll stay here where it’s safe.

He laughed, looped and disappeared. I tried to retreat to my cocoon, but it felt like paper. This was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Nothing, not even infinity, could be this lonely. I wondered how long it would take my internal organs to really turn to dust.

His chocolate eyes peered back over the window ledge, and I ran to him. “You don’t have to start by flying, you know. You can get a good running start first.”

“I don’t know how.”

“I have your printer…” he said, laughing, darting away. His emerald glistened, as light and soft as his breath in the morning.

I charged the door, blinded by the brightness of the world. As I ran, I looked around me. The black unknown is actually pretty well-lit and, at once, not so scary. My organs expanding with breath and light, my silky-blue wings spread past my arms and funneled freedom through my soul. I caught up to him, the wind tasting like strawberries.

“How are you doing?”

“Please, please don’t make me stop!”

So we followed the sun, and it pulled us westward across the sky. With every inch, I knew hundreds of times more about myself. About my love. And about the chain of nines that I now use as teaspoons to sweeten my Seattle cup of coffee.