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Spilled

I’m addicted to the rainbow. There’s something about its glittering colours right after a storm that reminds me there’s hope. That’s why I stare at it all the time.

Sometimes I would just stand in the midst of a walk, looking silly, as I just stare at it. Do you know? Rainbows have a way of drawing out the little child in me, the one who hopes that everything is simple and pure … so bright and without blemish.

Sometimes I would even sit on my desk and just stare at the drifting time. A rainbow is my little hope, my wish that one day it will be better. That the storms … they were just meant to wash away the filth, to allow the bright and beautiful colors of life to glow again.

I remember even with her blind eyes, she would always drag me out after a storm. She would ask if the sky was bright and clear again. There was always this little smile playing on her lips when she spoke. She would ask again and again to describe the clouds and the beautiful rainbow to her and then she would giggle and her words were always the same: “See, it isn’t always ugly. After every ugly comes the bright. Just like the skies storms never last but the skies do. They remain beautiful after every storm.”

I used to think she was childish. She was so silly but I would never say it, I didn’t want her emotions to be hurt until that last Saturday. She was strange that day, I remember. She spoke in parables but only one sentence remained in my mind even long after she was gone. “Do you know? I wish I was like the skies … hopeful and shiny even when my tears fall. I wish I could laugh after every storm and see the beauty of every phase but I’m blind. I can’t see it, so I dwell in the dark, hiding away from the light. I remain so focused in the dark that I barely see the light ahead anymore.”

At first I thought she spoke of her disability only later did I learn that she was describing our scars … the scars that shone in our souls so brightly that we only saw them and long forgot to look ahead at the shiny rainbow.

That was the last time she was there, but today I wander by her grave side. I wish I could say I mourn her but I know she wouldn’t love it. So I sit here and smile as I describe the rainbow for her again … just to remind her, that the world is always beautiful even when it bleeds. That there’s hope in every step of the way …. she’s my reason for loving the rainbows. If only she knew.

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