Monday, May 25, 2015

First Word: Larissa Higgins: Lilac

Tessa's scarf today is lilac.  And soft green.
            Round dots - polkaspots.
            Tessa adores scarves. I also cherish. Beyond this shared greed for silk and soft, I have absolutely no common ground with lilac. It's a flower totally non-indigenous to anywhere I've lived.  A soft pastel-ish anemic sort of flower - drawn to funerals, scented soap and mid-Victorian heroines who swoon draped over sofas and simper at the small slights. Blame a society that sees 35 pounds and seven layers of clothing as under-dressed, or blame lilac-tinted characters and predisposition to the vapors.            I've never vaporized an emotion into a swoon in my life.  I wear deep purples, turquoise blues, reds that blare in trumpet shouts, latitudes whose colors whoop and rage, stamp their feet and if they weep they pour their grief onto tin roofs until the people below bellow to be heard and cannot think. Sunsets are neon there, and soft lilacs are buried beneath greens that grasp and grow mile-high each night. Lilac sinks gently, missishly, into the leaf mould.  It moulders, weeps its way into insignificance, straight out of the story, unnoticed, unmourned and unmissed.            Tessa's scarf lies warm across her shoulders, wrapping, as to sweetly gather in and tenderly protect, smelling of vapors, closed-tight drawers - and soap

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