What is the colour of nostalgia?

The sun was stolen this morning.

This morning, in my three-year-old nephew’s story, the sun was stolen and so the dump truck took a ball of fire into the sky, but he got lost – he got lost in the purple galaxy. My nephew waited, hands hovering, to know what happened next. At some point in every story, someone tries to solve a problem, and gets lost instead.

Some days, I want to comb the beach – by which I mean, wander the side of the one road that runs through town. I want to pocket the flotsam of bottle lids and peanut bags and old song lyrics. “You’d be surprised,” said poet Nikki Giovanni, “at how many people actually waste what they know, not to mention waste what they feel.” In the stories, after someone gets lost, they find new paths under the bare willow branches. The best painting already travels the tiny lines of your thumbprint.

Outside, in the rain, walnut ink filters through a sock. It has been cooking, then slowly seeping, for four days and nights. “I’m excited to be thirty,” I tell anyone who asks. Finally, I have ink. I found the nuts rotting in a stranger’s garden. I took them home before the squirrels could. They will make enough ink to draw a map. Enough to write a love letter with no return address. Enough to last the winter. •

“This is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that this is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw.” – Brian Doyle

This lovely bit of drippy art is a collaboration between myself and my friend’s three-year-old — nothing gets abstract as fast as a toddler set loose in a new set of watercolour paints. This week’s writing prompt, in the chat, is similar — a sort of collaboration with yourself, working (as painters say) “wet on wet”.

This month, A Broken Tulip is officially one year old. One year of posting lyric essays every Thursday — the weird and pretty. What a ride the year has been, starting in northern Uganda, switching to the wet West Coast, and now pieces (like today’s) that flit between the two. I’m so grateful to each of you for coming along for the ride.