The Blue Girl
Once upon a time, there was a girl who was blue on the edge of a meadow that was green. And the girl was sad. Because she was neither color nor sound. She was – simply – alone She was not the bright blue of sky, but blue that once was gray: gray sky, gray buildings, gray smoke. An outside gray that crept into her dreams at night and into her play at day.
A girl who wasn’t born blue but became so because of the grayness of the voices of those who raised her, the grayness of the hands of those who touched her. Her song long gone, the purple and gold of her skin not seen because not looked for. Not looked for because not known.
Not known because stolen by the men in suits, who drove up the valley in black sedans, with promises on their lips and papers in their hands. They took away the trees. They took away the mountains. They took away the stars in the sky. What else they took - she didn’t know.
She only knew that she was blue. And that something had been lost.
After that the trucks came. And explosions they couldn’t see. And then the gray. A gray that never lifted. And the water turned brown, not earth brown but earth out of place brown.
And the sky became black with grime, black grime wiped from the sills morning and evening by women who remembered when days were colors and the wind was a song.
Women who dreamed of meadows by night and collected soot from the sills by day. Women standing ground so the children could be green and gold and filled with light. So the children wouldn’t be blue.