I’m collecting RED today, so let’s see your Red posting.. please put a link in my comments so others can see it as well.

A Red Convertible

The red convertible was made redder by the man in it.  He was incredibly pale. Blonde hair, flaxen skin, white shirt, pale arms. His eyes were moonstones, his smile cold as that moon. Why he would choose a car that showed him off to such disadvantage was hard at first to discern, but in time she came to understand it. That car accented his differentness. It made him a curiosity one wanted to encounter in order to examine it, and when you drew near enough to examine it, to converse with him and see his manner, hear his mind, you were captured. The trap snapped shut.

His mind, like his car, was anything but pale.  Once his mouth opened, he burst open like a Christmas piñata.  He snapped. He tumbled. Each word was a tiny gift that no one but you knew you wanted. He was surprise after surprise. A bit of everything, each thing intended to gift you, surprise you, capture you. The man was like a crazy gift wrapped up in white paper and string.

That red convertible, initially a contrast, became a perfect replication of the man who drove it. It took you off to adventures you could never dream of. Like the man himself.  Like his mind.

Many years later, years during which I have come to know the man well and to meet others who know him, I have learned that with every person, the trip was different.  When I stepped into the red convertible, it sped me off to a world in which anything was possible.  We drove off to galleries where one day I myself would hang. We drove to little inns that would become my solace, to crazy stores that would be my mood-lifters, to the houses of his friends who would become my friends. We would stop at roadside stands that had exactly what I needed, although I hadn’t known it before. We would drive with the top down, wasting music to road behind us that was like music made expressly for me that I’d never heard before. Those trips into the unknown were trips into parts of myself I didn’t even know were there. Parts I had visited only in dreams. Parts that opened me up like a flower and seeded further growth. That red convertible, long after it had been retired to grand seclusion in a corner of a garage that held many cars—one for each person his life drove him to—still exists in my mind, and every day, it propels me on to the weird and unexpected. Drives me on to who I am and who I will be.

Sunday Stills: Something #Red