We were both there that day at the playground.

         We had been making our hot wheels float through the air. At that age we couldn't float anything heavier than a toy car, and even then only about five feet up, but we already thought our unique talent basically made us gods. We were in the middle of an epic space dogfight—our cars making clumsy little loops and ramming into each other over the green rubber playground flooring—when we saw the woman in the bright pink jumpsuit, carrying six hula-hoops under her arm. We stopped what we were doing and watched, fascinated, as she set them in motion, orbiting her hips in a sparkling rainbow dance that caught the sunlight. It enraptured me.

         When I tried to explain the feeling to you later, you dismissed it. You said that we could do real magic. I didn't know how to explain the idea I had that the woman could too.

         You practiced making things float. Bigger things. Sometimes many things at once. Chairs, bookshelves, I saw you pull all of the leaves off a tree and throw them at Leo Manson for stealing your backpack. I kept floating my hotwheels, but I also begged my parents for one of the woman's magic hoops. I spent hours practicing her spells.

         When we were teenagers, you signed up for that study. For days you proved to dumbstruck scientists that our magic was real. At this point you could float actual cars. Endless flabbergasted headlines flooded national news, and letters from the university stuffed my mailbox asking me to join as well, but I had no time for that. I was doing my own magic, not just with hoops now but with ribbons and poi—all sorts of rainbow dances. You saw me struggling with the latter—trying to coax the exact right spin out of the stubborn beanbags—and laughed at my determination to remain shackled to physics. You said it was like watching a marathoner who's convinced using their legs is cheating. I bonked you with the poi.

        As young adults we traveled, sometimes together, sometimes apart. I found teachers who showed me how to elevate my dance to ever more spectacular forms. You had no teachers. You reversed landslides, raised skyscrapers from scrap metal, sometimes floated trucks just to show off. I used our powers for the odd pillow fight, but there was nothing I could do with floating that could hold a candle to the new magic I had found. We'd meet up in hotel rooms breathless and eager to swap tales of our exploits.

        Now as an adult you go on TV, live in a big house, get recognized. You go all around helping people and doing big, important things. You've perfected your art. I have a small studio. I do my dances in theaters, carnivals, playgrounds just like ours. I do small, important things.  We live right near each other, our lives separate, but close. When we get together, we laugh and float rocks, enacting epic space dogfights and talking about everything. You sweep me off my feet with tales of your magic. And I stand...

        With six hoops under my arm...

        And dazzle you with mine.