Too Close to the Sun {Naïveté}

By Grace Holmes | Short Essay

The sky was blue this morning.

Young and carefree, my bare toes in the grass, now my sky is yellow.

And not a bright yellow, but a hazy, heavy, dismal yellow, everything left dusted in ocher.

The yellow film makes my home’s pure white front door look dirty. The miserable tire swing hanging from the tree in my front yard looks like a scene from a dystopian novel I once loved. I can feel the wind picking up — the chill feels wrong in the warmth of the summer air. Wrong, yet so thrilling.

The trees rustle and bend, my hair whips across my ignorant, upturned nose.

It’s a strange and intoxicating change, to feel the entire atmosphere shift to something so uncharted. The yellow sky deepens to a polluted amber; midday suddenly feels like dusk. I feel like I’m somewhere else. Somewhere new. Enchanted by the fool’s gold sky above me, arms stretched in the cold, bitter wind, carelessly offering myself to the elements — uncertain and indifferent to the potential dangers. My hypnotic curiosity keeps me standing at attention.

My mother anxiously calls me to my home behind me.

The terrifying, tantalizing promise of the coming storm urges me to stay. I know I can withstand the wind; I just want to taste the rain.

“Come inside before the wind blows you away!” She jokes.

But the way the wind violently tugs at my clothes, I wonder if she really is joking at all.