Red is the color of August
It is hard to say much, and August has been a hard month.
Here are some words. I hope this resonates with some of you.
love,
ashley
Red is the color of August
I.
Red is the color of August.
Each beautiful sunset seems
like a protest:
clouds twisted into a gaping maw
an open-faced silent scream
others breaking into some type of
Rorschach test
with no right answer.
The half-moon’s edge is
sharp as a razor.
Everyone’s asleep now
and we’re in the same dream.
II.
I walk the yard of my childhood home
greet the trees
like old friends.
I visit the mound of dirt
where the pines once stood
rest my hand on the stump of maple
worn smooth.
I eat concord grapes off the vine
like I did when I was a child.
My father tosses one into his mouth
tells me the grapevines have been here
for 70 years.
He’s been cleaning up the place,
I can tell.
The backyard fence is gone
and metal stakes removed.
There are no remnants of the pool left,
no more swingset poles
littering the ground.
He is preparing
getting rid of
putting away a
way of life.
He talks about the lilacs again
for the second summer in a row.
They still block the road.
He ponders his choices:
cut them back, transplant them,
or remove them altogether.
Oh hell, he says. I’m not staying here anyway.
I don’t ask
but I assume it means he will sell.
Later I realize it could mean something else:
the way at some point all of us
don’t stay
all of us
become gone.
I take it as a lesson
don’t waste energy on things that don’t matter.
I take it as a reminder
of the ways we trick ourselves into
thinking there will be
a tomorrow and not a gone.
I hold it close.
I guard my heart against self-sabotage.
III.
It feels strange to be on vacation
when the world is falling apart.
The world has always been falling apart,
it’s true
but now we’re in a cash-only town
tucked away in the mountains.
When the man working the parking booth
greeted us with “Ohio! Where at?”
his half-toothed smile dropped
when we said, Dayton.
“Oh, you had some trouble out there,”
he said, shaking his head.
I thought
trouble used to mean the weather —
like lightening at the beach
or rain at a picnic.
I thought yes,
if trouble meant
blood from 9 lives gone
staining the sidewalk where I live
How unfair it is that I can be so precious with language
in a world so reckless with lives.
When I get home
I cut 9 flowers from my garden.
I leave them at the altar.
—
In memory of those lost in the shooting in Dayton, Ohio on August 4, 2019: Jordan Cofer, Lois Oglesby, Derrick Fudge, Thomas McNichols, Beatrice Warren-Curtis, Nicholas Cumer, Monica Brickhouse, Logan Turner, and Saeed Saleh.