💙
I think I have loved blue
since I was three or four,
before I knew a color
could remember things for me.
A tiny bottle of Bon Bons,
sparkling royal blue,
one of three metallics,
red, green, and you.
I fidgeted while my mom
painted my little toes,
and she laughed that the color
reminded her of a car.
I only knew
I loved how it made me feel.
And somehow,
through twenty-five years
of growing and changing,
I never threw that little bottle away.
It still lives
at the bottom of my nail polish basket,
too old to wear,
too precious to lose.
Then high school gave me
King Kylie blue,
darker, deeper, metallic,
and somehow familiar.
Not the same blue.
Maybe that’s the point.
Neither am I.
Today, at twenty-eight,
I painted it on again,
the perfect Tree Hill Raven blue
for twenty-three years of One Tree Hill.
And looking at my nails,
I can almost see her:
three years old,
wiggling her freshly painted toes,
while her mother tells her
they look like a car.
I wish I could tell her
we never stopped loving blue.
That one day
we would hold those two bottles
in the same grown-up hand
and realize how much life
fits between them.
Somewhere between
Bon Bons and King Kylie,
three and twenty-eight,
my mother’s hand and my own,
blue became more than a color.
It became a way
to find myself again. 💙
This was written by our contributing writer and social media manager, Savannah Byus.
Cover Image Source: Pexels, Suzy Hazelwood
The other images were taken by our writer, Savannah Byus.
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