This month’s theme was “My Favorite Things.” There were a couple reimaginings of the song and the usual great stories and music. Emily read an amazing piece which I’ll share soon, here. I read a five-sentence story in the open mike, five-sentence story portion of the night. This is it:
My Favorite Things
For one, blue, the blue that tints our blood, we say as kids, before it hits air. The blue of the edges of milk, sometimes, of the sun, sometimes, when I squint directly at it and feel the strain of my neck trying to pull my eyes away as if my body knows my eyes know that I want to keep looking till I have no other choice but to look away.
The blue of that old, metal globe on our bookshelf, of the boys’ fleece pajamas, of the garage Christmas lights on a lonely home I walk by.
And the peek of blue sky over kids that play basketball across the park out the window through which I’m looking, between slats of the blinds that pulse my depth of focus, between the distant and the near, from the kids to the window, from the kids to my reflection, the kids, telling each other you know your blood is really blue, look, you can see it in you arms and that turns red when you cut yourself, while I imagine myself there, a transfer of body back young, tugging down the sleeves of my shirt, looking up at that patch of sky, awaiting the sun to appear, to stare up at it, in the quiet shared with the rub of old leaves, staring, staring, till blue.
