Red is a boy you once loved, the fireman's son and you remember how you were a shy girl in a bedroom playing Solitaire when he tapped you on your shoulder, took you in his arms and that first kiss felt like a deck of cards shuffling fast inside your chest.
Red is also the strawberry field town where you grew up, but your eighteen year old self had to leave, so you packed a sleeping bag with apples, berries, clean underwear, cotton socks and poems and on the road you never missed a moment of merlot or sangria or beer and never failed to say: let's do it, come onlet's just do it, we only live once.
Another red is built with bricks from the ten thousand memories you have known: your grandmother's kitchen where you sat drinking a glass of milk or sneaking cherries from a bowl meant for jam, the skip and trip down the front steps, your skinned knees, when the flag meant America, when the long-haired boys of summer raced their Pontiacs and Chevys down Baltimore Avenue, when all you needed was love, these are the moments you saved under the glass of your mind.
The best red is you, still eleven years old in your bedroom sitting at your small desk and none of your childhood friends have died yet: you stare at a sheet of notebook paper, awk written all over it in teacherly ink, you chew on a peppermint as you erase dragons and sentences and words, the paper cuts your small finger, you watch a drip form on its tip while the snow swirls silent and lovely outside the window — your life is officially a metaphor or as the freckled boy who sat in front of you in class used to call it before he died that spring: methaphor.
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This one is unpublished. Dedicated to the memory of Michael Lockwood, the freckled boy who disappeared from my elementary school class before I had the chance to say goodbye to him properly.
Rich with imagery and nostalgia. Poignant. Nicely done.
"and that first kiss felt like a deck of cards shuffling fast inside your chest"
"these are the moments you saved under the glass of your mind"
and the entire last paragraph.
Gorgeous writing & images here.
really lovely!
Thanks for the kind words, everyone!
Excellent.Like a deck of cards shuffling fast inside your chest. Bravo!
I like the way this piece tightens as it goes. What a closing. Enjoyed this, Arlene.
Oh this is breathtaking. This will find a home, no problem.
lovely
There is so much here.
Some favorite moments:
The first paragraph, the feeling of cards shuffling inside your chest. I've read few analogies for that feeling that were more fitting.
And I love "the glass of your mind."
Beautiful work.
this is a series of rabbit punches to the throat, a phrase i heard nick antosca use. i am stunned. everyone has quoted my favorite lines. this piece just beats the crapoloa out of me. going to read it again.
Arlene, a prose poem / flash of first love, lost love, a search for love, and memories of all things loved - and changed over time. Everything tinged with the bittersweet reflection of how a tragedy can propel another's life. Excellent!
I like it b/c freckles are red, too.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, everyone: Richard, David, Jamey, Cynthia, Gary, D.P., Sam, Kathy, Meg, Cami & Elizabeth! Your generous and thoughtful commentary means a lot to me. Reading your words now are an inspiration and make me feel like I have somewhere to return to for sustenance whenever I need to take some of the sting out of rejection. Getting favs from you guys are a real gift! Thanks!
Terrific flow to this. You maintain the balance so well and it reads very naturally. Please post more of your stuff.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Very nice Arlene - tying the color to the theme, also evoking time/place so well - no awks on this one, just favs.
Enjoyed a lot.