Rolling 'round in our fields of Oleanders and Suns. Two pairs of eyes adjusting to the nutjob vortex of purple and gold.
-..anything Irish must have in it a blob of pretty and a fistful of crazy.. - you said.
- ..especially Irish summers..-
I had laughed, as tickled by your auburn braids as by our conversation. You were weird, and I, an archeologist.
So i stuck with you, all summer-long... dynamite-ing caverns, gauging fathoms, disgracing math... making a fool of myself, in general. It was only a matter of time before the hunter became the hunted, and the Jester, Her Highness...
see?
But tell me. Can your tresses still stir up a storm on placid magenta noons, Heather?
And O. Do they still have Summers there?
Our heads reeling under the Drama-class dregs of Juliet's ivy-balcony. Drowning, hitchhiking, paragliding, into wherever. And there we were,thinking it was the tinted cellophane of those 3D glass props we would fool around with.
The ones we were allotted during our rehearsals, yes. The ones you said you wished stores would sell? You had asked me where I'd gotten 'em from. You had asked me if I had stolen from the greenroom. I didnt talk to you for an entire hour before handing you the glasses. And the Sorry-note torn off my song-book.
About as much as I could protest Heather, the longest I could stay away from you without breaking down.
But you said you loved the glasses. And you loved their tinted purple.
I had smuggled them out of Ms Connolly's Locker during lunch break. So She never knew.
YOU never knew, Heather.
You with your blunted chisel and wood-carved animals. You with your Hannukah-songs and your alcoholic father.
I had learnt more just browsing through your sonnet-spewing eyes than Ms Conolly could ever teach me.
Clearly, I was young.
But tell me. Do you still hang feathery Dream-Catcher's by your broken-leg bed, trusting those helpless handiworks of art to take away your nightmares? And do you still lie to curious friends when they ask you about them, Heather?
And O. Do you remember being young?
Remember that rhyme about the kitten who wanted to mix up all the colours? One Grammy would sing to us after that staple St Patrick's Day dinner at mine..? And how she could never quite recall what the 'Colour-Kitten' came up with when he put purple in yellow and yellow in purple...? I'v long since found out.
But you weren't around for me to run to, Heather. You weren't there for me to run to, squealing, waking you up mid-slumber. Or stealing you out of your kitchen chores to fake a genius revelation, just so I could look at you in your sleepy pajamas. Does your button-nose still twich up in that funny way when you soap the saucers, Heather?
And O. Do you still hide your mails beneath that leaking sink?
It's been so long, Heather. There have been wars and there has been poetry. There has been love, and there have been funerals. But every summer, when this foreign sun shines on my neighbour's Oleander's, I ache to let you know what the kitten got when he mixed purple in yellow, and yellow in purple.
When there is purple in yellow, and yellow in purple, Heather,
there are letters that grow old in sink-bellies.
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