Well here it is my very first post! I'm excited to see the things that will happen on this blog. Deciding what to post first has been hard but I've (finally) made up my mind. I wrote this piece of short fiction last spring when I was give an assignment to write on the color red. Enjoy!

Certainly red

The poppies were beautiful. The same big bush grew in front of grandmas house every year. But some how they always seemed to be more beautiful than the year last, but this year was different.
The red poppies had always inspired me as a child. I knew if I smelled them I would be happy and then I’d pick some and take them to mama, because I knew that they were her favorite to wear in her hair when she attended church. I remember looking at the poppies in her hair and thinking how especially beautiful they looked on the day that our pastor gave his soon to be famous sermon on the atonement.
Then, years later, I thought that they whispered to me secrets. Secrets of happiness and ideas to spread the happiness I felt. Now the poppies seemed dead, drenched in a scarlet blood that was shed by people that thrived in taking life, people like my ma‘s murderer. I decided that the poppies were dead when the they no longer spoke to me, just like mama. They failed to make me happy, and now I wanted no part of them or what they use to offer, if they were dead what could they have to offer? But I guess that they were just false ideas of happiness and joy that only the simple minded would believe, I thought as I lay on the cement soaking in the sun.
We as a community have a tradition, we lower the casket into the ground and as a part of the ceremony we drop fistfuls of dirt on it. This symbolizes rebirth or at least that is what Joe Porter says, he’s kind of a patriarch in our community, and every body believes what Joe Porter says.
As I watched fistful after fistful drop on my ma I began to feel as though I was in there with her. When I could no longer see her casket because of the dirt I felt like I had to struggle to breath so I could stay alive. I knew I had been buried alive with mama. Before we left grandma sprinkled poppy seeds on the freshly tossed dirt, she said that by the time they bloomed I would also be blooming in my new life. But I knew it was a lie, all adults tell faults hoods so “kids” are happy.
After the death of mama nothing was the same. I no longer smiled. I hated happy people. And I never knew what to think. It was as if I was no longer an independent thinker of ideas, but an independent feeler of emotions. Grandma told me that this was to be expected. She told me that I was suffering from the shock of mama’s death. But it felt deeper then shock, it was more like the paralyzed feeling that you get when you belly flop into water. Your skin tingles from the slap of the water. And you feel like your lungs have collapsed. But for me I also felt like my hands were tied behind my back. I was doomed to drowned. Every thing was numb around me. It had to be inside of me in order for it to register, but even then there was no promise of me noticing it.
I soon found that my eye’s seemed to search for the color red in objects but when I found it I immediately looked away as though it hurt my eyes because I wasn’t ready for what I had seen.
Red, it was so noticeable and blunt that there was no mistaking it. I had to act immediately or else something would happen which meant uncertainty. The reality of red was to hard to accept, it was so strong and powerful, I guess that I didn’t like it. Grandma some how noticed my fascination with the color red, then she remembered that I had only one dress to go to church in. With money that she couldn’t spare she bought red fabric for a dress to sew for me.
When she presented it to me I was at first enthralled, the simple yet becoming style was one that would really make me feel comfortable when I wore it. But then the red hit my eyes with a powerful blow it felt as though my spirit had to stagger to regain its footing, so the little order of my feelings didn’t fall apart. After the initial shock a deep revolt set it in. In seconds it had hardened and lodged it’s self like a rock in my throat choking me. I felt that I needed to sputter and struggle for breath, but I couldn’t tell if it was the physical or spiritual side of me that was reacting to the red. I just knew then at that moment that I couldn’t accept yet it, the redness of it. No I couldn’t.

Stephanie