This piece is about teen girl with angst, who also happens to possess a rebel heart. She both realizes and embraces that her childhood is over. She is ready to just go. Angst is a universal feeling, though. So read it even if you're not a teen...it may bring back those teenage-y feelings....of angst and letting the past go...but also of hope and new, better things yet to come!.. :-))
Hope you read it and enjoy it! And hey, if it needs work and you wish to tell me how you think it could be better, I'm down for constructive criticism. Or if you love it as much as I do, say hi.. Let me know what you think. Peace and love.
The Color of Go
by Kimberly Lightfoot
My booted feet are in a hurry. The crack and crunch of the woods makes a
snapping sound, which is what, I imagine, my parents will do to my neck if they
find my note before I’m gone.
My boyfriend, Eli, waits for us ten
minutes north by the river. He has come out of hiding to show me the way—a frenzy
of brilliant and cloudless color awaits us.
He sees beyond the monochromatic haze of my parents—the sharp, speckled
skin of a snake. Black and white. Salt and pepper.
Taryn’s caramel hair is visible through
her second floor bedroom window. I drop
my backpack and bulky boots next to the giant tree that leads up to her room. The
smell of green invades my nose. My socks
get caught on the prickle of the tree’s skin with every push upward and become
a necessary casualty, snagged and torn with several holes by the time my climb
is finished.
Taryn sits talking with her mom on
her bed. Their attention turns toward
the tree. I let a floppy branch cover my face. My green, flannel shirt and Oscar the Grouch colored
cargo jeans should do the job of blending with the leaves.
My attention turns to the sky. Dark chokes-out the relaxed flutter of the
forest leaves. Crows soar like an arthritic hand of a witch. The murderous flock numbers in the tens of thousands,
maybe more.
“Um, climb trees much in stark white socks?” The interjection
of Taryn’s voice surprises me and sprays pink, purple and orange strings straight
out the window at me. I fall to a lower branch. The tree extracts pigment from my shoulder in
the process.
“Ouch! You okay?” Taryn’s sarcasm has turned to concern.
“I’m fine. But my flannel is definitely injured.”
Another voice thunders through the leaves
from the base of the tree,
“Come down NOW, young lady!” My dad’s vocal chords are scratchy and gray. His words are iridescent feathers falling from
his mouth. Superfluous, they float up into
the air and are lost and scattered over the sound of white forever.
Sweat spreads like the vicious
outcome of bad decisions down my body—itchy with white-hot consequence. I free
my flannel from the tree’s finger-like grasp by ripping my sleeve. Making use
of the extra material, I wrap a headband around my head which drinks the
consequence from my face.
My mom rushes into Taryn’s room. Her face is bleached in despair.
“I thought we talked about this?” Waving
my note in her hand.
I leap from the bumpy tree branch into Taryn’ open bedroom window.
“I’ll come back home. I’ll…I…” a tan rubber band is taut around my
heart, making it hard to speak.
“Will you stay? How can I be sure you’re telling me the truth
this time?” Tears form down her cheeks
in the shape of bird beaks, tiny triangles falling—misty, glossy raven mouths.
“I’ll just do it. I’ll stay.” The assurance of submission is the color of
my voice. But my consummate pulse rests
on crimson.
She knows I’m lying. She knows of my quest, the pilgrimage I seek—primary
and pastel boulders rumbling down a steep hill to somewhere. Explosions of tinted possibilities—lakes of wetted
paint with exponential layers of bright, fluorescent, and florid zig zags. I want to bathe in the color of a beginning of a real life. Wash off and start all over again. Spectrum is a wish.
My parents are down stairs talking to
Taryn’s parents—the finite gray scale of unfulfilled promise results in the
blackest of grays every time. Everyone
is the same.
I sit on Taryn’s bed like a catatonic
zombie—the bride of Rambo. One sleeve of my flannel ripped off, the tattered
material is snug around my head allowing me to feel the beat of my heart—my
temples pulsating. The cut on my shoulder oozes red, writing its message of go
down my arm in a slow sludge.
Taryn pulls a pink shirt and a pair
of scissors from her closet. She cuts one
sleeve and produces a roughed headband.
Just like mine. ‘Cept rosy.
Her eyes fresh-chartreuse, bright—the
exact color of wild.
She folds and lays the material around
her forehead, ceremonial in manner.
The zipping hush of the worsted yarn renders
the past the color of the air in here and the future the color of the air out there.
Taryn yanks her bag to her shoulder. Her voice is milky lavender and violet with go.
“C’mon. We’re already late.” We climb out the window and scale down the
tree.
Just before we disappear into the
woods forever, I surrender my white socks at the trunk of the tree—a sacrament,
of sorts. They lay there inside-out,
splinters of sharp but dull russet-colored bark stabbed through their once
white but now poor, life-less, muddied soles.
Scarlet beat. Loud scarlet beat.
