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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3551 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Winter, Break Laurie Byro Off Dominica, the sea is blue this morning. Women dress in wide skirts, gather shells and treasures to lay against the beauty of their colors. Hips swing slowly as they walk friend on friend to the straw market. A flock of butterflies follows them, drawn to the yellow and crimson batik, mistake them for flowers. Occasionally, they shoo one away. Their laughter makes red hibiscus grow straighter in dazzling sunlight. My mother is about to purchase yards of fabric, silks that are tie-dyed orange peel and lemon like the ices that make your mouth water. Colors are so pure unto themselves that a green becomes pistachio flecked with sage. Purple becomes spring lavender in mist. Women drape bolts against her skin, cluck like aged hens, measure and sew, hem and baste while she pats her flat stomach. I am busy being born. I have snuck off on my Uncle’s Twelve o’clock diesel to a neighboring island. Natives who work the boat nip a hidden flask of syrupy rum. I have been scolded and spanked for my fascination with the ocean. We live in a place that is snowy and dull five months of the year. While a seamstress snips and pins fabric to my mother, I lie to my Uncle about her whereabouts. This is my last chance to flick open my knife and carve the tangerine sun into quarters that will dribble down my chin when school begins on Tuesday. Later, when Mom checks with my aunt, realizes the confusion, I will have accomplished my mission. I will store up enough color to last the final months till summer. I will have jumped into the ocean in the exact spot where whales have been. I will pull a turquoise ocean over me like a fancy lady’s robe. I can feel the heat on my cheeks for the trouble I will get into. Or is it a dragon blowing his fiery breath? He tells me to pull out my pocket knife and start slicing up the citrus of the sun. He tells me to hurry before it sinks into the final sleeps and school begins. |
