Memory of Red by Susan Evans

Memory of Red

Sometimes the memory of red washes over me,

and I am once again my first-grade self

walking home from the bus stop,

on graveled Hopson Street, past little white clapboards lining the road,

and I fall and its cut flows is a rivulet of blood

down my bare leg. Big sister

urges me off the ground, tiny frown on her brow, ponytails

like ears on a blond cocker spaniel.

The blood, thick like warm paint, like salty sea air,

spurts on my socks like serious mistakes. I

wail over a galvanized wash tub

as my mother pours alcohol,

scorching my white and trembling

leg. Scalded hot sauce screeches into the tub,

a red scarf of fear,

an awakening doubt of safe outcomes,

confirmation that I’d better get tough for the rocky road ahead.

Another memory, centered in sleepy Chester, where the bed uproots itself,

clatters and scoots across the room,

like heavy metal wheels running on rails,

and in the afterlight, Don hushes me, singing, “Like a freight train

running through the middle of my head, woo woo.”

But I don’t want to remember anything sad.

I don’t want to remember Lonesome Bob and Willie’s stardust on the blanket,

the cold fish heart the size of a small marble and that hard.

I don't want to write about that picture of the orange Van Gogh,

and his madness and night journey, and Granny and her vermillion roses,

singing that old ballad and putting her little shoes away. Or how the day

looks out the window,

and Great-Grandma, tiny as a matchstick, says, “Yes, lots of birds,

and they shit all over my porch.”

I, too, clean up the nasty spills of romantic casualty,

like bird shit in my underworld of shouldn’t. This is how you kill love –

running like an unarmed man being shot at.

I am an experienced victim, but see through disguises,

see beyond my vanishing troubadour, bard Marc of birds,

wetting the tip of his magic pencil, with a great flourish offering

his girl with the turquoise toenails 100,000 poetic words,

not one the one I wanted to hear. I no longer scarf down table scraps.

I just want one small plate of heaven.

All the black knights, those yesterdicks,

rode hard in the direction of chilled wind,

stole major energy in exchange for minor rewards.

But my natural self has magical powers,

like the otherworld neon katydids last summer,

antennas like green eyelashes,

and the dream orange skies of New Mexico,

and Neptune’s warning to stay clear of dark nets.

I've seen dusks, leaning against a forest tree, ghostly braves on horseback

riding towards the river, smoky mountain sweats,

smolders so hot my skin exploded like a ripe peach,

and wizard wassail bowls watering apple trees in wet December.

I take heart.

Some nights, silence like snowy petals fall

from my ceiling and some evenings pink sunset

showers trickle down,

and like a scarlet firebird, galvanized,

my burning body rises from its pyre.

Susan Evans lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and enjoys writing poetry, creative nonfiction, and memoir. Susan's work generally explores the darkness but searches for light.