Vox Populi
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Jose Padua: Blue
When I was young I would say that my favorite color was
blue. Blue was the color of the sky, the color of the clothes
I most liked to wear, the color of the ink from the fountain
pen I used in school. Being slightly color blind, blue meant
more to me than purple, which didn’t seem all that different
from blue, and green, which I could see, but never on the moon
or up a mountain. Yellow I could see well and red was clear, too,
as was orange, but if significance can be measured in words, and
those days remembered like an object I can hold in my hands, no
color had more to say than blue. When blue spoke, I paid attention.
When blue was silent, I waited for blue to speak again. I am taking
my time learning to understand blue. I am becoming more familiar
with the things it says when it’s winter and the leaves have fallen
and the waters run black in the evening. Blue is the story I was told
when I was too young to know who my enemies were and had only
a child’s sense of pride. Blue is an idea I never had until today when
I stood outside with my hands in my pockets and followed with my
eyes as the birds made circles against a dull, gray sky, when a man
played music no one listened to, when all I could recall were the colors
I can’t see, falling like stones from my hand into a level field of blue.
—
copyright 2015 Jose Padua
Photograph by Jose Padua
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