Indy Ayers, Shades

It was the color of dark flames, flickering out into lighter hues of orange and yellow, as I sat with friends around a tarped campsite, attempting to start a fire with a can of sunscreen and a lighter. There were no signs of it in the dark dawn, where we sat in dim moonlight and talked for eons, the fire fizzling out along with the night’s tide.

It was blinding, during the first time our eyes met. In our laughter, our heavily flushed faces, when we held hands for the first time; it pulsed in my body and my mind. It slithered into the cracks of my past and patched them.

It was there when we fought for the first time. Screamed, raged, cried, as we tore at each other’s minds in desperation to somehow stop the suffocating anger. He took it away with an embrace, an apology, and a heated kiss. In return, I eased it from him, with the return of a brush of his jaw, an apology, a promise, and the press of my lips to his, searing our hearts together.

The color lightened, turning into something much more suitable to us.

The butt of a gun smacked me in the jaw, and I saw it flash behind my eyes. They hadn’t warned me how harsh the recoil would be. The small range in my friend’s backyard smelled of smoke and sulfur. My grandfather probably remembers the scent of fired guns and misted blood on a trail in Vietnam, a memory older than I am. I hope I never have to see it on any of them.

It dropped me to my knees when I saw the bloody halo around my sister’s dog, laying in the interstate, where a moment before, she had been standing, 50 feet away, and alive. Blood was a lighter shade than I thought it would be.