Aoi: Japanese – 1. Blue  2. Innocence
                

Blue: adjective-

1. The colour of sky.

You cough, choke on the swirling fumes and clouds of cancer spluttering from the trucks that pass you by in uniform rumbles as you walk with your head down, hands shoved deep into your pockets to worry at the slowly undoing seams. Avoid eye contact, never speak unless spoken to, mind your own business, walk fast. Just a few unsaid rules that dictate this mundane daily life. Whether or not you’ll make it home tonight.

Perhaps.

Eyes trained on the hairline cracks in the concrete sidewalk, spiderwebbing outwards and onwards for miles ahead, you plod on in the stifling heat that somehow manages to seep through breaks in the sky. Nobody, you think with each tired step. Nobody looks at the sky anymore.

And why should they? Why bother, when there’s nothing up there to see but mistakes and violence in different shades, nothing but the occasional artificial flowers of war, of chemicals and dynamite blooming black-grey in the distance.

Someone you used to know (yes, someone, what use are names now when they don’t stop anyone from dying) once told Min stories while you looked on scoffingly, stories of a time when once could look up into a wide open canvas above and there wouldn’t be confused ashes masquerading as clouds, no, not at all.

Real clouds, he had said over the sound of gunfire coming from above, bloodshot eyes shining in the light of naked bulbs underground. Real clouds with sun tainted edges, that brought rain and shade and lightning.

Real clouds.

Another truck passes, scattering gravel, and you hold your breath. Wait for the smoke to disperse lazily, leave behind tiny tendrils that still manage to steal into your lungs as you exhale. You make it home all right but just before you scurry into the almost-comfort of the dark underground again, you can’t help but glance up at the sky.

Blue, you think firmly in your mind, go to sleep dreaming of skies that once were and the mere memories they are now.

2. The colour of dragonflies.

Delicate things, dragonflies, with their translucent wings that hold miniature rainbows if you look close enough, with their fragile oblong bodies seemingly too thin to be able to flit here and there in abstract patterns only they themselves can ever decipher. No wonder they died out so fast around these parts.

You sit with your back to the wall and it shivers against your skin, past the thin cotton of your faded tee, shakes you right down to your very bones. It’s the aftermath of the only dragonflies left here, aftershocks and one-tone drones from above seeping through the stone. Dragonflies? Of course, only of the metal kind. The ones that buzz too loud overhead on their unmoving wings of toughened steel, the kind with oversized shadows that no one dares to stay too long under. Min comes to bury her little head in your shirt, whimpering.

Another one passes outside and you hold Min tighter, hands clenched into tight fists as you pray that this one will pass you over today. It does, and in the wake of the first few aftershocks and sound of buildings, lives falling apart, you wonder if you should grow up and start calling bomber planes for what they really are. A rose, you decide, clasping your hands over Min’s ears to shut out the sounds of rising screams, is still a rose by any other name.

“Jie, make it stop, please, make them stop.”

You miss the real dragonflies.

3. The colour of the sea

When Min asks you what colour the sea should be, you answer blue, despite it being anything but, despite the fact you know better than to lie to four-year old sisters. She won’t ever the see for herself anyway, so what’s the use? Mama isn’t here anymore to correct you, pull you away and make Min cry when she tells her exactly what the sea looks like

Min darling, it’s wrong. The sea isn’t blue, it’s murky green and oil slicked, with dead fishies decaying on the surface. Fishes, Min. Like the ones Mama used to have before the soldiers came and all the fishies died. Blub blub blub they used to go. Bang.

But some days, forcing your rations on Min and watching her unknowingly eat your share, you can see mama in her corner. Fingers laced, eyes glazed, muttering promises unkept to herself as she wavers like a candle flame in and out of your hungry delirium.

He’s coming back, he came back, he will come back he will he will he will

You do nothing but blink in the half light, try to make her go away but she stands and smooths her blood stained shirt primly, one empty eye socket seeming fixed on you as her one good eye roams wildly. Comes back finally to rest on you rather sceptically.

Don’t let them do this to you, don’t let them get you. Not you, not Min, not me. No. No, wait, they got me, didn’t they? Got me, got me good. Bad. It’s not that bad come to think of it. Boom boom and it’s over. Has he come back yet?

No, mama, you whisper and she leaves with a huff, mildly satisfied. Min tugs at your sleeve, hands you a piece of her looking stale bread that she’s only taken one bite out of so far.

“Jie, you can have mine. Who are you talking to?”

I’m talking to mama, can’t you see her? Can’t you see the blood she left on the walls, smell the odour of rotting flesh? But mama’s gone. Do you think that where she is, the seas are blue?

“No one, Min ah.”

You make her eat the rest of the bread. Go hungry as always as you hold her amidst the sound of bullets and midnight.

4. The colour of hills in the distance

You draw hills for her, loping, hump-like things that don’t resemble the real thing in the slightest. Again, it doesn’t matter since there aren’t any more for her to compare yours with. Green. Green and add a bit of blue because they’re far away, you explain and do one for her to follow. She does perfectly and you smile, glad that you still remember how they look like.

Hills are green, red for flowers, blue for seas. Don’t ever forget that.

5. The colour of high school uniforms

It’s raining, the ground turning to mud beneath your feet as you splash with Min over puddles. Angels crying, you tell Min as you wring the water out of her wet hair, sitting on the dusty floor of an abandoned terrace house that’s miraculously still standing. She spots it first, stands to pull the rumpled turquoise pinafore out of it’s forgotten corner and drape it over her shoulders, parades around the room laughing. Parades around the tiny enclosed space to the sound of her own laughter bouncing off the walls, of raindrops falling to their deaths.

“Jie, how do I look?”

“Leave it alone, Min. It’s just a stupid uniform.”

It comes out harsher, more bitter than you intended and the blue cloth slips, slides, rustling to the floor in tiny sighs from her disappointed shoulders. Mocks you from in the form of scattering dust bunnies and tears in Min’s eyes. Don’t you miss me?, it trills in a way reminiscent of naïve voices trying to comprehend the concept of war.

Yes, you answer in the back of your mind and pack the memories back into their tiny, cramped boxes. Tell Min you’re sorry, that Jie didn’t mean to shout at you, motion to her to come over so you can wipe her tears with the edge of your tee.

“It’s just a stupid uniform, ok?”

You’re not too sure if that’s meant for her or yourself.

5. The colour of ambulance lights

You saw it coming all along, but the moment it happens, you can’t help but feel your heart clench painfully in your chest. The world tilts and the pain makes you dizzy, Min screaming shrill beside you not helping one single bit.

“Jie get up, no, please, don’t be like mama!”

Oh Min, I wish I could, I really wish I could.

“Jie! Jie please!”

But I can’t.

You think of flashing red, blue lights accompanied by the rising wails of ambulances and how they’ll never come, think of dragonflies both metal and blue against the sky, of friends in uniforms with their buckles undone at the waist and first button loosened in the sun. You think of Min and mama and how he never came back. Fishies, bombs and hills.

Blue skies.

Do you think, where I'm going, the skies will be blue?

6. The colour of war, of things lost but never forgotten.