chestnut

The color of friendship is chestnut, and it sounds like crumbling leaves, under the fast wheels or roller skates. I feel the feeling of friendship best during the month of September. I remember her moving to our neighborhood, maybe because our soccer games became suddenly more intense due to her athleticism alone. We play together with the boys, and nobody tells us no. We make a club, where we meet and share stories and sweets. We alternate between these activities and hide and seek.  At other times we gather chestnuts on Sundays for our schools from the yard of the academy of sciences, which happens to be close to the neighborhood where we live. We cary the heavy bags on Monday to school and wonder what is the purpose. One time she is being a little to brave and climbs the trees in the yard of the academy of economic studies - to gather more chestnuts for school and she falls, she breaks and arm. This marks the end of a season. 

Then high-school falls upon us, and we learn that we are not really to play on the same field with the boys, presumably girls are not good enough. We are only to watch, but this does not come close enough. So we move on. I skate with my friend on the hole filled pavements of Bucharest, towards the park and back - passing fast and only when the lights are green in front of the government building. The guards are sometimes quiet, sometimes sweaty, and sometimes they whistle. We do not care.  We run, we rest, we grow.  

We always gather with friends for birthday parties. They involve sandwiches, and cake and Italian music from the 60s or before, on pretty vinyl. I do not have those at my house, so i visit her and we dance after we are done with the cake and we have removed the table and chairs from the way. We do not complain for lack of space. We make do. Her eyes are chestnut and warm, and her name literally means light. Her birthday is in the fall, when the leaves turn from green to a reddish brown. The color of friendship that is. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gone

Today we have put a big heart  In a degradable box We have buried the box Under layers of clay   Knowing that dreams Cannot be buried for long And that guardians protect Their loved ones Long after their gone Perhaps as long  As memory holds
Read more

stories of ice and wind

I had learned the secret of beautiful women as a child, from a grown up man and he shared it with me in return  for me  sharing a poem He said that beautiful women forget they do not bear past wounds on their chest, they move forwards past storms And they emerge clean and tall. He too shared his thought  in a poem, that i have mostly forgotten although i have pursued that kind of beauty but rather the richness of memories in all colors and flavors. sometimes memory burdens with the depths of its truths of unforgivable but forgettable acts justified or not by the quality of possible futures sometimes you crave that kind of bare chested beauty the cleaner mind, the youthful body  untouched, unmarked by scars and the weight of predictions then you bring it out when it helps you to make the decision to break with the past and if you listen there is an almost audible sound of a heart breaking. mine sounded like ice it was cracking for days and when the piece tha...
Read more

Silver

  Silver is the color of resistance, at least for me. I was baptized in a silver and copper cauldron in the house where i was born. A 150 year old house standing strong, the house where my grandmother and her sister grew up for the most part. The house their grandfather had bought from his father, who could not figure out how to divide a 3 room house to his 9 children. The house that their grandfather had expanded to 6 rooms, and where 6 families used to live during a certain period of communist times. They were all sharing one bathroom, which apparently what the communist regimen demanded from the rich bourgeois family that owned 6 rooms - to share their riches that is. The house that we were now sharing, two families with kids, plus my grandmother and her sister. We were all there and not in church, maybe because Bucharest was too cold in winter, or more likely because at least one of the family members could not be seen in church, or would loose a job that involved a position wi...
Read more