Member-only story
Seeing Red
Close your eyes. What do you see?
The sun is red while my eyelids are closed. I feel the warmth. Warmth of the star. Warmth of my thoughts as the daydream takes them away. Back to my childhood, running on a soccer field with friends. Some I’m still close with. Others I’m not. We wear the blue side of a reversible jersey. The opposing team wears red. I don’t recognize their faces. The faces are blurred smudges. The opposing team doesn’t matter, but they wear red.
Red like the fallen leaves that collect on the sidewalk as I walk to school. The autumn air crisp and delicious in the morning. I didn’t care for school much, but I enjoyed the walk to and from. I’d carefully choose my footing, doing what I could to stomp down on the shed leaves. The satisfying crunch and my shoes scuffing along pavement a soundtrack to my mornings before meeting up with friends taking the same route to school. The orange and gold and red leaves didn’t matter as much once my friends joined me. I wonder if they crunched their own leaves before our paths intersected.
Eventually, the red leaves would fade with rain, turning to a murky sludge. A reminder that even beauty dies. A thought I didn’t have as a child, but one always around the corner as an adult. Death first hit as an early teen when my childhood dog died. A black lab and chow mix with a white chin and paws. The sting…
