Glow Orange

I’m thinking about how things sneak by me. I consider myself to be an observant individual and then I consider how I just noticed today that the leaves have become gold. When did the fairy green bleed to sepia? It was a few days ago, maybe four, when the garage sale sign shade of orange worn by the mountain ash across the street nearly offended my good taste before it dawned on me - it was beautiful. Is one still classified as observant for noticing they noticed late? Maybe I didn’t see it because it crept in while it was dark in front of and behind my eyes. Maybe I didn’t see it because it inched in at a constant rate the same way hair grows; how one washing it feels like you don’t have enough hair and washings later you need a whole handful of shampoo.

Grandpa, I never saw you grow old. One summer you were green and now you glow an orange I’m afraid to watch.

I woke up thinking of you today and I felt afraid. I asked Dad how you were doing? And,

“When did you talk to him last?”

It’d been about three weeks since we last spoke. He said you were doing “better”- medicine is full of such relative terms - that last week had been “good.” So I call you and you sound better. You sound happy to hear from me right from hello. But then you ask,

“What are you not telling me?”

You’re either so good or I’m so transparent. I say “nothing” and that I just needed to hear your voice. I say that I dreamt about you last night but when you ask if it was a bad dream I lie and say we were walking together. You tell me that your muscles are too weak for walking and that all the oxygen they’d normally get is being used by your O2 hungry lungs and that if you were walking, you must have been dead and a ghost. I sigh inside, hoping you don’t know how close you’ve hit to the truth. I don’t tell you that I dreamt you called and you were “worse.” I don’t tell you that the call I dreamt about felt like it would be your last. I don’t tell you I’m worried about your lungs, your blood oxygen content, hypoxia, dypsnea, and all the other scary terms and factors I’ve recently learned of your disease.

I worry about your strength. You talk of getting better for something that there is no cure. I wonder whose sake this is for, surely yours because I know different. I wish you knew best. So badly I want for you to be right, as right as you’ve always insisted on being. I know you are receiving my love because that is not diluted by distance. I wonder about strength though… does it weaken the further it runs? Does it run out of breathe before it reaches you to give you more? Maybe love and strength are directly correlated and the other simply doesn’t exist without the one.

I’ve never worried about your spirit. I see your failing body and yet your blue eyes still reflect back the same hue as mine. You snuck by me slowly but you’re still so quick that I’ll never win an argument with you in this lifetime.

I must be so transparent because somehow, oh somehow, you hear all of this in my silence and say,

“Now, if I were about to die, I’d call you.”

You are so good. Our conversation ends in laughter and “I love you.”

Glow orange and I’ll watch so long as you promise me it isn’t winter yet.