Baby Blues, and Reds and Yellows

“Dorothy don’t eat that, it’s not food sweetie!”

I obediently drop the piece I have been gnawing onto the floor. Why, if it’s not food, has it got yellows and reds on it? Those are food colours.

            “That’s a coaster honey.”

What is a ‘coaster’, if not to chew on? Honestly, this world is rather confusing, the ‘dos and don’ts’ of our eating habits. Why can’t mummy just make everything food?

She scoops me up from the floor and wrestles my legs into my special seat, which is higher than mummy and daddy’s at the squarer table.

            “Bon appetite!”

Mummy slides my Pepper Pig bowl onto my tray, smiling, but I’m not: this mush, swimming on top of Mummy Pig’s dress – and drowning George – is certainly not edible. It’s not yellow or red or green or any of the food colours. How can I possibly eat that?

Daddy angles my aeroplane spoon (which only makes noises when he wields it)| in his giant hands and dunks it into my bowl. This is food then.

            “Open up monkey!”

I am not a monkey, daddy. You showed me one at the zoo and I am not that hairy-The spoon is flying closer to my face, I can’t escape the mush! Why won’t let my seat free me?

Daddy zooms the spoon right for my mouth but my lips are sucked in, like the time I found a ‘lemon wedge’ – how that qualifies as food, I will not know (other than being yellow).

            “Nee-oww, c’mon munchkin, let’s eat some banana.”

I open my lips to protest and in it goes, flopping around my mouth. It shouldn’t be food-but it’s sweet and pleasant and doesn’t hurt my nashers. I think I like this ‘nana’.

When George can breathe again, in my bowl, daddy heaves me from my seat and cradles me to my bed-cage.

            “Mummy and I are goes to have our own dinner now, ok honey?”

I thought my name was Dorothy? Now it’s Monkey, Sweetie, Munchkin, Honey – can they just not decide?

From my bed-cage, I can see mummy and daddy at the table, mounds on plates in front of them. Maybe Piglet or Eeyore are on their ones.

As the food disappears into their mouths, their spoons do not become aeroplanes – not even daddy’s. And where is there nana? They have green balls and red sticks and a yellow splodge and a brown brick Surely they cannot eat that?

But, daddy’s is all gone, quicker than Dancing Tigger can bop to his song (very fast). Maybe the colour rule for food is not real: I ate yellow and red and that wasn’t food and mummy and daddy are eating brown bricks that are? How will I ever learn what food is?

After the Big Bang

Then, I was awake.

Once adjusted to the ominous black, I gazed upon pinpricks of white: some far away and others like neighbours. Yes, in the beginning, the galaxy did not feel like a solitary place. Time was washed away by peering into the stars, marvelling. Each rotation displayed a new angle, a new perspective on the inky garden I was anchored to. The blazing petals stood against the heavy atmosphere – was it oppressing? No, it was simply there, just surrounding us in a sea of nothing.

I did not notice change until I began to sweat rivers. They tricked around my spherical form; the atmosphere-of-nothing preventing the torrents from falling below. Water pooled and swelled like a star about to erupt.

And, in response, ulcers began to bulge, hot and sore, filling with the pulsating orange blood. When one did seep, the wax trickled; crusting, creating moles of rocks. Other lingered on, shifting in the oceans, as I broke up.

I was forming: becoming a world.

Soon, ticks niggled at my scalp, now split into woven islands. They developed alongside I, conjoining and recalculating, until they inhabited my whole body. Some would patter along my forehead, while others tangled into trees, or rode upon pinched mountains. Some floated like I in the seas, sinking into embedded pores, unaware of the blistering of my molten blood.

Their eyes consumed the atmosphere – as I did when first conceived – while I blew air in circulations, as they prayed for breath. Some invented night and day, which merely passed me by with each, lumbering pirouette. They could see what I first witnessed, as they stumbled into life and death.

For I was a God, a life source to those who pranced upon my watery skin.

I was Earth.

Written after inspiration from Sharon Olds' poem 'First Hour'