Personal Essay: Too Bright

My Sun

By Just M
QuailBellMagazine.com

​​When I was a child, I couldn't pronounce my "y"s. I wasn't allowed to ask why. But also I pronounced yellow like lellow.

​When I was a child, I had this lellow bush growing in front of my window. Its bright little petals were my very own sun. Sometimes it shone too brightly.

When I was a child, each spring I would crawl between the branches, usually with a book, and create worlds. I was safe in my sun. And when I returned to the real world, as my mother called it, I erupted out of the sun covered in lellow pollen. Pieces of my sun. She made me wash it off.

When I was a child, I watched the bush grow alongside me. It became so tall that I couldn't see outside my window. All I could see was the sun. I let my eyes burn that spring.

When I was a child, my mother said we have got to do something about that eyesore, it's too much for this house. It's starting to grow into the foundation. My lellow petal tears did little to stop her and my father from strapping it to the SUV and ripping it from our home. They took my sun to the yard waste section of the local dump.

My first summer without the sun, my Nana died and I watched my father break and I learned how not to be at home when my mother was too cold to bear.

Years passed and I too was forced out. I was too much for the house, too much for my mother to deal with. Sent to the yard waste section to live with a sister she never calls. She still rarely calls.

It's too high and dry for my lellow bush to live here in Colorado. The altitude always seems to win. Maybe two suns cannot survive so closely together. But I feel my sun growing inside me and sometimes I feel the backs of my irises burning and my no one can wash off the yellow dust I leave behind. When I was a child, I couldn't pronounce my "y"s. Now I know why.