Carnation Red

As a child,

I thought love was blue.

The color of the scarf my mother insistently wrapped around my neck

even though there were still flowers in the ground.

The color of summer skies,

my father's eyes,

the shutters on my house.

Love was sweet.

It came bursting through the doors in sixth grade

when I excitedly rushed home from the spelling bee,

a blue ribbon on my chest,

indicating I knew how to spell 'unanimous'.

It sat in a vase on my desk as the flowers for my birthday,

scrawled in my mother's handwriting across a note left in my lunchbox,

comforting, 

familiar.

Love travels in envelopes,

in packages,

in airplanes to visit.

Love is well-traveled and wise.

I know love in the pews of my church,

carried in the musk of incense,

sitting quietly beside me as I kneel in prayer.

It's in the hands of the boy

who whispers,

it's alright,

you're okay,

you're strong enough.

It stills my trembling hands in the worst times,

a stubborn reassurance.

Love is persistent,

waiting patiently outside audition rooms,

pacing nervously outside operation rooms.

Love is patient, it is kind, it is sweet,

filling the loneliest hollows of my heart with a childish, wholesome blue.