30 Day Photography Challenge - Orange

It's the wide bottom of candy corn. The part I eat first as I dissect each piece - bottom, middle, tiny white top - in an attempt to make the sweet moment last. To toss a handful into my mouth would be an effrontery to the season. Treats such as this are to be savored, relished, sugar melting on your tongue. Then there are the games. One piece, white side down, carefully centered between upper lip and teeth. He calls it egg tooth. Some of us prefer two transforming us into vampires, fangs courtesy of Brach's.

I went looking for the photo of him doing egg tooth, but couldn't find it. I did find this and he's wearing orange.

Now that boy is taller than both of us.

It's the color of my brother's striped shirt when he was a little kid. The Bengals football helmet he wore as he rode his Big Wheel in a hail storm a few hours before tornadoes shimmied across the hills, dangerous sisters they were.

It's the color of the plastic whale we played with in the bathtub.

It's marigolds and citrus stuck with rock and roll earrings. It's my high school boyfriend's Trans Am and the Harvest Moon hung over the Ohio. It rhymes with nothing, but it sounds like basketballs bouncing on the wooden gym floor. It's autumn leaves and packages of Reeses', crepe paper streamers twined with black. It's tigerlillies, zinnias and carrots yanked from the ground. It's the Monarch fluttering by. It's the color of a sunset. It's Blogger and Dunkin Donuts and seasonal frosting on your cupcake. Concentrate it and it becomes focus and energy.


It's sectioned and quartered, squeezed and peeled. It's pies and breads, spreads and cookies. It's spiced and carved and Jack o'Lantered with a candle flickering inside. A beacon.

Fiddlesticks. I just made myself hungry.

Geoffrey goes black and white about orange. Randal is radioactive and Poe dark. Alas.

UPDATED: Summer and the effects of orange.