bridges

1

A blank canvas is pure beauty. You never know what will happen to it, or what it will soon become. We start off with no memories, and innocent. But as your life continues, you add color and beauty to the canvas. You might add a line of red, from when you fell off your bike for the first time, your mother cleaned you up and put a cartoon Band-Aid on it. You can add yellow and orange, from the first time you stayed up by yourself and watched the sunrise. You can add the color blue, because that was the color of the bottle of alcohol you drank for the first time. And as life goes on, the canvas becomes more beautiful, even if there are crooked lines, where there was a shaky hand behind the paint brush.

There are two paintings side by side in my local Gallery- the Brooklyn Museum. They are the exact same scene of a man kissing a woman, their hands are curled in each other's hair except that the color schemes contrast. One dark, and hazy grey with deep brown accents where the frame holds an air of careless, ugly. The other has burning red with shots of bright orange. It screams bold and beautiful. Underneath the two paintings is a plaque that reads, Choose the one that appeals to you. The first time I viewed the pieces, I realized the hues of orange had the same feelings embedded in it as the ones that tingled the bottom of my heart when I kissed that forbidden boy in the lazy afternoon April of 2012. I deemed the first painting more beautiful than the second simply because it reminded me of the person I thought I loved. But now that I look back, the burning red reminds me of the way he left me. The burning passions of anger, hurt come back and I leave my dignity behind in front of the matchstick figures.

​I curse as I flag down a cab in the busy city of Brooklyn. Rain starts to pour down and I throw my head back. Could this night get any worse? Thunder cracks down on the street in front of me and I jump back from shock. A horn blaring shakes me out of the reverie I'm in and I hop into the cab.

"Big jolt of lightning, aye?" I huff and tuck my hair behind my ears. "OK then. Where to?" I check the time on my phone; 10:14 PM. "The Amtrak, please." The cab driver nods and turns the radio on to soft rock. I pull out my Kindle knowing that the arrival time showing on my iPhone is not guaranteed since we are in New York.

The enticing words of Emma Woodhouse capture me. She speaks words of love, of self-control neither of which I had until Aaron Dickins gave me this book.

It started the month before my 19th birthday. Dates here and secret hookups there or occasional gifts just to show his appreciation. It felt harmless, but daddy saw otherwise. He wouldn't listen to me. I told him Aaron was the one.

I can find a hundred ways to describe our love, but was it really love? Our love felt like that time I was on a speedboat that skipped over the ocean waves like a pebble, and I clenched onto the railing until my knuckles turned white, and my stomach would not stop tightening. Our love felt like when a bee flew into my hair, and I ran screaming for half a mile. That day, tears flew out of my eyes faster than I sprinted. Our love felt like when I went hiking, and was walking on a very narrow trail that overlooked a huge drop. The soil was slippery from loose rocks, and it was easy to lose your footing. The tense feelings in my bones did not stop until I finally arrived home later on. Our love felt like the first time I saw the ocean. I was awed by its vastness. I took my first barefoot step in the waters, ventured too far into it, and nearly almost drowned. I've had a fear of the sea ever since. Our love felt like the panic that set in when there was a massive forest fire up in the mountains, close to my home. They sky was filled with ash, and my heart was filled with dread. Our love felt like a lot of things, none of them good. So was it really love?