Hues of Love

Sky Blue

SKY BLUE

Slowly the colors of love turned to the movements of the heavens. Marya was surrounded by a sky of love that was brighter than neon lights and yet emptier than one of Mama's finished bottles. She was surrounded by both old and young hands that would catch her in every direction if she ever stumbled. Not that she did, but the promise was there. Not once did Marya venture to think that perhaps the weight of those friendships amounted to as much as the hold of clouds.

Marya flew through middle school in an ignorant summer sky, blissfully unaware of the shifting in the atmosphere.

She did not notice the love of her friends turning lighter and lighter. From love of one another's presence, comforting laughter, and smiling faces, it turned to love of one another's clothes, extra powder dabbed beneath an eye, and a polite withholding of scorn replaced with unbridled, meaningless compliments.

She did not see Timothy's love burn whiter. Once an agreement between two children, the two turned their adoration into pre-pubescent romance when he, without the watching of one of their mamas, presented her a dollar-store ring hung around a lilac blossom.

She did not watch her parent's love smoke into ashes. A love that was once a young wildfire had begun to burn itself out. The more they searched for their summer warmth, the more they saw that the cocoon of reality had changed the other's wings.

All of these changes occurred in the peripheries of her vision - for Marya was the frog at the bottom of the well believing the circular sky above is all that makes up the world. If there is such a thing as a "calm before the storm", this was that respite.