Innocence, lost

She twirls careless and beautiful. Butterfly dress sweeps her knees, her thighs. Whimsical and free. "I'm a fairy," she thinks, smiling, face tilted toward the warmth above her. She twirls.

She can't see it coming towards her. The darkness floods in, shadowing her butterflies one by one until it reaches her flushed face. Shocked out of her blissful daze, she screams and falls, ripping open her perfect knee. Blood flows. She touches it, never seeing so much red wetness.
The darkness is gone now. But it's taken something with it, a piece of her. The fairy is gone. In her place is a scared girl, doubt and nervousness creasing her brow. Only later do these take root and transform into anxiety.
Before that day of loss, of the realization of pain and fear, she had a brilliant imagination. She lived in fairy tale castles, fought fiery dragons, swam with mermaids, but most of all she flew. She flew past her kindergarten classmates, her pesky brother, her villain father. She could fly anywhere.

The day of realization came and she would never be the same. She tried to find her wings after, to fly again but never could. They had been ripped off her. With her imagination gone, reality set in quickly. At first she was confused, as if being birthed again, awakening in a new, unknown world. She began to see things she didn't before. Like the Fall, her eyes had been opened to good and evil. Unlike Adam and Eve though, she didn't have a choice. Evil took root in her that day and nothing could have prevented it. Nothing can ever really prevent loss of innocence. It happens one way or another, at one time or another. The difference in whether or not the transition scars a child is how the loss happens.
Doubt and fear replaced her creativity and imagination. Fear of men, fear of failure, fear of disappointing her parents. Fear later turning to anxiety then depression. Twenty years later, she's finally reversing what the loss took from her, what the darkness did to her. She sees herself again, as that twirling fairy girl, wild and free. She sees her spin and begs her not to stop.