#royhughes

You will never be lovelier than you are now

A Roy and Hughes Drabble

Between the white there was:

Red sand. Red sunset. Red heat. Red fire. Red blood. Flowing always as I watched; destruction by my hand. The land was left in ashen ruins, with red splattered between it like an ugly painting.

The picture of war, stained on my hands with the red paint I’d used to make it.

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There was, one time when I was young, an artist at the brothel where I was raised, and he spoke of lines and colors, dashes smoothed and blurred to make the picture. He talked of colors and rambled on, words slurred from drink but never failing to speak of beauty. Spoke of complimentary colors. Purple and yellow, blue and orange. And then red and green.

Red and green.

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Despite the red of war, I saw in his eyes the green to soothe my destruction. Green as fresh as newborn life, plants and leaves thriving. An herb to provide relief to the worst of the burning destruction that plagued my days.

I’m not sure how, it just was. Tenacious, succulent green plants in a dried, cracked desert.

And then it was lost, shriveled and browned to death and buried under the ground as rain fell beneath a cloudless sky. Water for the plants that had already died.

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Now I scream in fear and hate and red is back. Red blood, red fire, as I burn the green I see in front of me with heat from cold hatred.

Green is good and assuring, but this is green envy and I hate it more than the red that fills my vision. I burn it to dust. And the desert is back. Dried and cracked and splattered with red. I fall to my knees with heavy realization.