Responding

by Kayce S. Hughlett

The summer of 2016 has been a hard one for our world. The only way I know to respond is from my heart and through my creativity.

This is Not the Summer of Love*

Red. Like a strawberry. Anger. Blood. A deep scarlet kiss.

Heartache. Heartbreak. I don’t know where to begin.

Will I be open and luscious or remain closed off like a broken stem?

My heart is sad, so sad that even the call of a fresh summer berry falls flat.

I ache and cry and move my body through rote yoga poses.

I pet my cat and drink a beer to fall asleep in darkness.

Restless slumber is filled with stories of near miss and lost dreams,

squashed and fragile like a berry under a steel-toed boot.

Longing. Wondering. Wandering.

Gray summer days match my soul and I ask Why?

What do I have to long or ache for?

My friend, Melinda, gone too soon?

My almost stepfather, Dan, hung on too long?

I ache with white privilege and knowledge that

Black Lives Matter.

I want the world to be bright like the flowers in my garden,

but darkness calls and red speaks more of spilled blood than creative passion.

Then I catch a dreamy glimpse of my great great aunties with their

crimson lips and zest for travel.

I feel their kiss on my brow and Aunt Grace’s birdlike hand in my own,

her creator’s hand, the one that turned sand into glass ~

blue glass filled with flowers like my garden ~ raspberry, marigold, white.

Grace. Will I? Can I offer it to myself and others?

Or will we all drown in the loneliness of spilled blood?

Can I keep my heart open or will it close off like so many of my

ancestors gone before me?

When did they stop tasting the sweetness of the berries?

How could they cease to notice the blooms on roses and the

golden streaks that stream through summer clouds?

Will I turn into one of those stern-faced people or

Will I reach for the stars like Great Aunt Gertrude building

her own home in the Mojave desert?

Will I share this piece or keep the pages closed ~

sealing the fate of my own broken heart?

*Thanks to Julie Gardner for the “strawberry” writing prompt and the borrowed line for my title: This is Not the Summer of Love