Purple Clouds
Time tempted
my demons, but they wouldn’t leave. I’m used
to them carving meaning and twisting the soul around the heart. My skin turned red from heat and anger—and there
were always purple clouds on my skinny thighs.
I rubbed them, pain.
The clouds came in different places. Some of
them from sadness, some of them from failure, but I told myself that I was a poor
girl and that’s all I needed to know. My
mother brushed my long golden hair until it conformed to being straight, not
wanting to be tangled in any other mess.
I caused all sorts of problems.
In fact, many in the town called me a demon because my real mother left
me in the yard by the sprinkler, and I went to the drunk’s house first. Of course, I do not recall such an event at two-years-old,
but they gave my mom a bottle.
When people contain
only small favors of fortune, they try to flaunt what little they have. For me, that meant that I didn’t get to play
with the normal, Christian kids. One of
the teachers kept her diamond strict eyes on me, the sinner. She never told me exactly why God thought I
was from Hell when babies are innocent, and Jesus loves children. I’ve read the Bible many times. Tons of words meant nothing to the situation.
School felt
like a torture ground, even early on. The kids ran around me in a blur, and at
first, I joined in and danced. They threw
me down and laughed. How stupid I was to join them, to think I could belong to
more than a lifetime of suffering?
I got up
from the bench and walked up to the tree, “Just giving you my respect.” I
climbed up to the top, until I shook from fear, the small branches, and
twigs. The wind wove in and out of this
world, gracing my eyes. I glanced up and
saw the sun, too bright. The branch cracked, and I fell straight to the ground
next to the sprinkler.
The fall had
knocked the wind out of me. I gasped for
air, begging it to come to its place.
My senses blurred,
still not adjusted to the sky. They came
into focus slowly.
A long time
ago, with my grandma, I remembered happier times. She put me on her lap, and she’d throw me
into the air and catch me. She called me
her Sun Bee because of how much I liked to be in the garden with life. Life came in all kinds of hues, she
said. Some of them believe they needed
to be bold, they needed to be strong, but some wanted to simply be beautiful.
“Now don’t be
fooled by all colors and promises, in this world. You shouldn’t chase after a pot of gold at the
end of the rainbow. Only fools do that,
suffering fools, honey.”
I smiled and
opened my eyes again. I swear I saw her
in heaven, giving me a lesson from so far above the mortals’ world.
So far and filled with white clouds.
