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.