The Red Story
Sophia Bon, “Our daily walk”
by Orpheus
I feel red today—
not the red that blinds my eyes like a bull in the hot Mexican summer
not the red enveloping my room lusting over every exposed crevice—
it’s a familiar red. It’s the red
I wrapped myself in ten years ago, fuzzy, threading, and misused:
you’d need to look again to recognize a poncho blanket
with a large pocket on one side.
It’s a red of déjà vu,
reading “The Little Prince” at breakfast while drinking green tea with honey,
a small dog shedding all over my pajama pants;
holding plastic and metal once more, with the taste of damp wood in my mouth
and Benny Goodman trailing from my open window
out to the honeybees
and the hunt club walking back in the late afternoon.
The red used to suffocate me. I’ve spent
eons
within years
within days of
red in monochrome, instinctually remembering
where everything was,
how everything was,
who everyone was.
It took over my
schedule, my
interests, my
happiness. My parents smothered me in it, gilded in constant worry and excuses and love.
I had to smile and withdraw myself, burying my desire to
leave and never look back.
I wanted to live without red,
exploring the world outside and the universe within—
to walk alone and see what type of person I truly was without that infernal color.
I’d imagine walking through the streets
of Mexico, wearing sandals, feeling the rough, dry dirt
poking at the soles, and a random stray walking behind me at a distance,
the smell of corn wafting to the small crowd waiting
to order a kilo of fresh, hot tortillas.
It would be a simple day, but I would be doing
it with no one to catch up to or wait for.
The world would happen at my red-free pace.
However, when I spent my first year away from the red, I found myself longing for it.
I experienced the new world, but not in the ways I wanted.
In the course of a month, I was
cast away,
rejected,
sitting alone in the dining hall,
hoping somebody would walk up to me. I tried
drowning my sorrows
in parties and homework,
rarely sleeping or sleeping throughout the day.
In two months, I felt that the red set me up to fail once I left.
I was saturated in my snow globe and when it broke I didn’t know how to adapt.
I spent the nights with my thoughts formatted
like Finnigan’s Wake,
pushing me to
dive
further
into a deep
white pool of
ennui
and
apathy.
Another year passed when the first flash of red woke
me in the pool.
I was surrounded by people
but didn’t know if I spent enough time with them to call them friends
or if they had ever called me their friend;
“friend” seemed uninspiring, unoriginal, like the times I was called
“nice”
or
“interesting”
growing up,
words you can throw at the shy kid in the front of the classroom to feel better about yourself.
Those words tasted like sand to me.
I didn’t know what to call them, but they knew me enough
to invite me over to their lunch table, repeatedly.
Was it out of habit?
Was I their background studio audience,
their NPC,
the guy you could rely on to give you his classroom notes,
and once used would be left behind for better, more well—known classmates?
I saw the hint of red,
I wanted to be hugged by the blanket once again, but my
Finnigan’s Wake
had become a ball and chain, and however hard
I tried to swim up,
I couldn’t.
move.
an inch.
It took one more year to break free from the pool,
and by then the surface shone like rubies.
Some friends came and went,
but I found myself standing alongside people I knew for certain
wouldn’t cast me aside. I never told them how happy I was to be there, to have my
existence
continually acknowledged.
I couldn’t sleep again, but this time because I wished each day would last longer, that the
eons
within years
within days I once loathed
would keep the red alive.
Living in the pool opened me to a feeling I thought I would never have again:
Empathy—
and it was starving.
If I couldn’t say how happy I was to be with them, I would listen to them,
their troubles and worries,
comfort them however I could,
make them feel better about being alive
the way they made me feel.
Today I looked back at him,
at the grillo scrunched up in the corner of an empty table,
his glasses dangerously on the edge of a nose buried in a book,
his mind filled with worlds of adventure and magic and road trips and destiny and wonder.
He didn’t look up when I slowly sat next to him;
he didn’t flinch when I put my arm around him and held him tight;
he didn’t cry when I told him
it’ll be okay,
you’ll get your adventure soon,
you deserve it more than you know.
I feel red—no, I am red.