saturated sunrise; nyte

I do not see the sunrise through the pane glass window.

My mother lent a hand in helping me to lay heavy boards across it in the span of four years’ time, splintering wood across a fragmented reality I did not wish to see with the passing of twenty-four hours. Seven boards and twenty-eight nails later and not even the slightest ray of six’s comfort could break its barrier.

But this did not give way to darkness.

Instead I lined white washed walls with colors of every shade, pinned to plaster and dry wood between the cracks in the corners and my sanity. My mother was the catalyst of it all, painting pictures of her own sorrow to pin alongside my own. Filling every square inch of blank space the only incentive to be found we spent the evenings with cans of water turned muddled colors of our emotions only to splatter the remains upon the floor. A mother with a daughter lost— there was symbolism to be found in it all.

Sidewalk chalk turned to watercolor— they all bled one into the other, paper edges overlapping like the tears in our heart. She lost a husband to a time turned to stand still, with a daughter on her hip and a shade of red bleeding from her heart that I could not replicate on even the purest of white paper.

But, oh, did I try, painting pictures of band aids to stick across the tears in my mother’s paper skin, as if the imagery of a daughter’s imagination run rampant would stitch more efficiently than needle and thread. But she insisted I did, tacking pictures of sunsets and garden paths across the front door as if my heart was the most prestigious art museum the world had ever been graced to see.

Paper skin of my own I was to hold a thin heart and my hands and watch the colors bleed, purples running into blues of a different shade— I suppose inheritance is accidental. But whereas I could connect the dots across my skin in the shades of similarity between my mother and I, I was left to paint question marks in the margins of my skin, wondering where my father’s identity ended and my own began.

I found him in the sunrise, so I split the glass and asked my mother to cover the window.

Seven boards and twenty-eight nails later, I no longer saw him in the walls I filled with a thought of my own, ideas and concepts blurring one into another like the paper edges never separated.

It seems my mother had never been able to distinguish the two to begin with.

So while she was tacking hatred to a heart of my own I was left in the guise of her innocence, paintbrush in hand and empathy in mind. The nights we spent on wooden floors with splattered paint and spilled hearts were left to be found with different initiatives. My mother poked at her bruises to watch the colors form while I painted over my own.

The last night we painted together, I found no difference between pure white paper and her porcelain skin.

I had seen the blank space on the back of her hand, quivering in concentration that sat in the silence between us. But she had brought her hand to rest and I saw opportunity and its consummation, resting the tip of my paintbrush stained purple against her skin until I saw color bleed through. Simple movements executed she was left with the sight of a compass to guide her way. Two lines and four letters later she did not speak to me as she exited the room.

I do not see the sunrise when I awake to white washed walls covered by a sin too innocent to be seen.

I do not see my mother in the space left behind, either.

The shell of a woman still trying to find guidance— I had believed the heart of a girl to naïve to know the difference could change the time wasted.

Instead only a vow never to fall to the guise of inheritance I reach for the notepad on the bedside table, pen rolling between pressed palms and the sketch of broken glass. The shattered are most often the most sharp, whether fate to find it in tongue or terror.

But I have neither, left to be dulled by the time it takes to fold the piece of paper four times and press it to the empty space in my pocket before abandoning a room of color to instead find place in a world of black and white.

No words of excellence explained I see the compass on the back of my mother’s hand, reassurance in its rarest form and I find my way down three steps to a path painted in shades of grey. Left hand in a pocket full of contemplation I run a thumb along its edge, yet no shades of red were to be found.

Girl of a different color to my right— I struggle to recognize color outside of its designated place, and I hold out the paper in her direction, “There’s a place for this and it isn’t in my pocket. Perhaps it’s better suited for yours.”