{"id":705,"date":"2022-09-27T10:46:23","date_gmt":"2022-09-27T15:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/?p=705"},"modified":"2022-10-12T15:39:57","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T19:39:57","slug":"flying-in-reverse-by-cesar-toscano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/?p=705","title":{"rendered":"Flying in Reverse by Cesar Toscano"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When I was young, I learned how to fly. I placed an array of pixels together until they were a 4D 8-bit flying contraption.<br>Maybe it worked because my father was part duck and mother was a quarter swan.<br>What are your parents?<br>Part air animal or part land animal?<br>If so, you know and there\u2019s no more reason to ask again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1910, when I flew for the first time, the sky was pink, laced in strawberry clouds.<br>I have never felt so alive, not even when I actually grew a feather or two the next summer.<br>Imagination has unlimited possibilities, and many don\u2019t like to agree, and I would like to say they are wrong, absolutely wrong.<br>On that day, I flew and flew with only my mind and a jar of sweets. Sugar is important for imagination, makes your brain run a little wild and a lot bit faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My town looked like a miniature city up above, I wanted to collect them and play with them, make my little village of my own.<br>You would have wanted to, anyone would have. Little figurines doused in possibilities and dreams of a new world, my own little world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s now 1942, I wanted to fly again like those birds over the battlefield, free with not worrying about death. I would love to fly again but I am in between two battlefields. They would think of me as a foreign fighter and shoot me down. They possibly would not see me as a duck or even a swan like my father and mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Cesar Toscano is a Chicago based writer; he is currently a junior majoring in creative writing at Columbia College Chicago where he worked as an assistant poetry editor for\u00a0<\/em>Allium<em>\u00a0magazine. He also runs the new magazine <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mysticowlmag.com\/\">Mystic Owl<\/a><em>, which will be released on October 3.\u00a0His work delves into mental health and identity through a speculative and horror lens. When he is not writing, he enjoys watching movies and playing video games<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>When I was young, I learned how to fly. I placed an array of pixels together until they were a 4D 8-bit flying contraption.Maybe it <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/?p=705\" title=\"Flying in Reverse by Cesar Toscano\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":787,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}