2018 Writing Scrapbook

Maple

Iridescence was the most convening structure that I had, initiated within my miniscule range of vision. My world was captivated by the blockades formed by spherical orbs in my eyes. Not once had I been granted with the delight of seeing vibrance, or a difference in the quality of the shades in the world.

Sure, I could walk down the street and see the same objects, the same corners, the same foliage and street signs, but they were only made up of a select range of coloration. A select view of my corner of the universe. I tried to discreetly cover my missing aspect, the thing that to other humans was commonplace, a tragedy if you were missing.

My secret, if you will, was my loss of hue. The simple fact that shape and texture was the only pleasure I had in viewing an object. Density, depth, shading, that was all visible, but what was the use without the most vital component? What was the worth?

It was as if I was blind but could see. I was deaf in the iris, ignorant of what others could see. Those of stupidity, they created an assumption that living without knowing of what you're missing is the far preferred situation, but they forget to think of the causes of such a detriment. No, my lack of it was found after birth. I was given a brief glimpse of beauty before it was stolen from me like a thief in the night.

Candles burned brighter before. Autumn shone more heavily. Eyes sparkled and were different from one another. The world was not like living in an Ansel Adams photograph. Out of everything that could've been taken, I was stripped of color.

How suiting was it that I went by no tangible name? A nameless identity, striding down the streets like a worthless figure. I sought after stories to tell, after artwork that could help me regain any deposits of the hidden manna. Humans had a multitude of words to describe what I was lacking in, and the fading of my wishy-washy memory did not serve useful to the preservation of what I once knew.

Gold, Green, Sienna, Cream, Ochre, Ruby, Fawn, Peach. What ironically colorful description! I sought the phrase that could be the inept description of my lacking, my disability. Wheat colored only took me so far. Wheat had an odd texture, like a stalk of grass shooting up from the earth. It was lightly colored, a blissfully boring shade of gray, meaning that it had no evidence of what color a character's hair was in a book when I searched for my literary utopia in this sense.

It was no use! Nothing could ever let me see, nothing could ever regain my full vision. I was an unsuspecting bomb waiting to go off! To blow a fuse and never return to my previous mental state! Torture, it was, waiting for a hint of what I'd lost.

So it made my breath catch in my throat one day when I saw something else. It was not gray. It was not black, or white, or anything in between. It was a girl. A woman with gray eyes and a gray face with gray clothes and a gray chin. But when a leaf drifted from the tree overtop, it lay on her head for a moment before she felt the uncomfortable prickle of tension rising in her nerves.

Before the swipe of her hand, it was all of the time I needed. All the time needed to take my breath away. The leaf, it was... red. I ran towards her. She was a beacon in the snowstorm. A lantern in the darkness. Her gray eyes went wide, but looking at her face, I gasped in awe.

"May I help you?"

I only stared. "Your lips are... red. They're," I tried to find the right word, "crimson in color."

"Well, yes. My lips are... crimson, I suppose."

I watched as she wandered away from my encounter, mind muddled and filled with inaccurate first impressions. I stood, seeing if her lips would remain red as she went. Watching, they didn't falter. They were like rubies sealed in a mine of slate.

Running after her, I caught up once more. "Listen, how are your lips red? How was that leaf that fell on you red?"

She looked at me as though I was a fool. "Because they are. Why else do you think they would be such a color? Is the sky turning purple now?"

"Well, I wouldn't exactly be able to tell you."

"You're a funny man," she replied.

"And you're a funny woman," I retorted, more curious than angered. "What's your name?"

"Maple. Maple Brown," she replied with the faintest hint of a smile with those red, red lips. "Why do you ask?"

"You've helped me see."