My style and my mind alike to roaming*

"I am not the woman whose voice animates my essays. She's made up."
-- Nancy Mairs, "Carnal Acts"

The sun blushed. Her lover kissed ear, cheek, jawbone and eye, whispering goodbye to each part of her as flamingo feathers delicately settled on the blue belly of the morning sky.

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My youngest son attacks art. Fingers chase a scribble across paper, crying out for help before crashing into another line. When he paints, hands splat and fart globs of color. "Get 'em, get 'em! Aaah!" he yells as he forces red and blue into a violent shade of purple. But I don't worry that he peppers his day with destruction, that he prefers the punch to the hug, that he insists city buses be equipped with guns, because he is the same boy whose color choice is pink, be it nail polish, cupcake or crayon.

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In the photograph, a girl in a pink dress sits on the edge of a chair at the end of a driveway. Her feet are crossed and dangle in the air, her shoulders are up around her ears and she's smiling. If you squint, you can spot the shadow left from a lost tooth. Next to her is a jug, hanging from her side is a coin purse, and propped up with rocks at her feet is a painted sign that reads:

lemon

ade

25 $

It is a hot day. The shadows look dark, cool, but she sits in sun that bleaches the sign to near whiteness and melts the ice in the jug. There are similarities between my 12-year-old daughter and the small girl who inhabits that photograph, but they blur as I forget who she was and she searches for who she will become.

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Pink is the color of painted nails, girls, early morning, cold fingers, the excitable penis. Wrap your hands around this and you'll get warm, the lover suggested. Oh yeah? What do you take me for, a novice? she replied. Pink is love, a carnation, the cheeks of a corpulent, satisfied man. Later, she searched in her closet and found the sunrise hanging between a fleece jacket and a little black dress with dusty shoulders, so she wrapped it around her neck, climbed the bus and went out into the day.

* Title courtesy of Michel de Montaigne, father of the essay.

Potential

Courtesy of Magic Madzik.

It's a flat, gray sky, no dimension or variation to the clouds that have been pulled over the treetops like a giant blanket. Another day under cover and I sigh as pinto beans skip across the counter and I sort out the moldy ones. After the beans are simmering on the stove, I take one of the rejects and push it into the wet soil outside my kitchen door . Tomorrow, when I wake, I'll find a giant beanstalk growing there, its thick truck bending and pushing through the fence that divides my yard from Lorna's. I will step out onto the kitchen stoop and, setting my cup of coffee on the steps, will grab hold of a thick leaf stem and pull myself up. The stalk is firm and fleshy, the leaves wet from the night's rain, so I climb slowly so I won't slip, yet I make progress. Cool shreds of cloud swirl around my arms and neck and far below I see the patchwork of roofs with their mossy tiles. A crow eyes me from its perch on a tree. Great view, I tell the bird who doesn't respond, and since there's no one else to talk to, I climb on, wishing I'd worn something more sensible than a purple bathrobe. Tiny drops of water cling to the fabric, making it heavy and damp. Up I go, pausing now and again to cup my red hands and blow warm air on my fingers, but not wondering where I'm going nor what I've left behind, just climbing to the next leaf,  then the next, and the next, so I don't notice when the gray lightens and thins, until I've poked my head through the top of the cloud and am engulfed in light. It tumbles out of a blue sky, bouncing and giggling across the brilliant cloud-floor. I blink, squint and, finding the surface springy, yet firm, haul myself up and look around at nothing going on forever. No castle, no giant with nostrils sniffing for an Englishman's blood, no bag of gold or harp to steal, just endless sky and light, and now me there in the emptiness, too.