At the age of four, I gained consciousness for the first time. I watched documentaries about little cartoon characters exploring deep space in pretty purple rockets and fighting off evil aliens. Yet, I was never worried that aliens were going to come to Earth and potentially eat my family—I was more concerned about a volcano that had erupted 200 years previous to 2012 in Italy, and obviously freaked out as the concept of time was not yet clear to me.
When I was six, I was on family vacation and managed to get a hold of a book from the hotel reception. I still remember that receptionist—she was stony and humorless, with a head of badly dyed red hair. Her glasses didn’t seem to fit on her face and she always wore the same cyan stiletto heels—which only further increased her already formidable height—every time I saw her. She never smiled, not once. I don’t think she liked me, especially since I borrowed a book about the human body. I was sitting down, reading waterfalls of knowledge on human evolution, my eyes glazed over the pages without taking any of it in. When my older sister saw me staring at the book stupidly, she chuckled and plopped down next to me. “Whatchu reading?” she teased.
But instead of providing an answer, all I could do was stare blankly at her and pretend like I knew what I was doing. Looking down, I decided to base my reply off of the picture of the Homo erectus (which, at that time, I didn’t know what it was; it just looked like a funky person) and instead vaguely answered “humans”. She laughed, then reached over to grab a napkin from the bedside table. After successfully retrieving one, she pulled a sparkly blue pen out of her pocket and carefully drew a lowercase h on the tissue, being sure to not tear the delicate paper. She then explained that “h is for hello”, phonetically teaching me how to read. She then taught me the letters a, s, c and t. After those were well understood, she taught me the entire alphabet and let me practise by reading the sentence: “Alina is really awesome”. Confidently, I read it out loud without a hitch, making her grin proudly and wrap me in a hug. And in that moment, squished up against my sister’s chest, I realised then that if I could read this, I could read anything.
My family holiday quickly turned into summer school. I devoured 2-3 chapters a day, re-energised with daily naps, and began memorizing bizarre facts about the human body. For two straight weeks, I badgered my sister and mom with endless “Did you know” questions any chance I got. I think I annoyed my sister so much to the point that she got a nosebleed from annoyance.
One day, after I learnt about veins and how they carry blood, I wandered outside and held up my hand to the sun. The shimmering afternoon light caught the thin bluish threads beneath my wrist, making them radiate starkly against my skin. The gorgeous colour reminded me of the glittering stars and swirling nebulae from all those deep-space exploration cartoons. Like stardust under my skin. And on that day, I yelled to my sister:
“Look! My veins are blue like Neptune. Did you know the Earth only has one moon, but Neptune has fourteen?”
She looked at me, smiled softly, and said: “That’s nice to know”, then kept walking towards the morning buffet.
My eyes travelled back skywards. The sun was bright, almost blinding me—but at that moment, I think I fell in love for the first time.
Writer – Maria Secara
Editor – Romi Feng
Artist – Bailey Young
–August 2025–
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