Southern Legitimacy Statement: Tobi Brun lives in Dayton, Ohio, in the historical corner of the city south of the new developments, where the cobblestone streets still echo with the footfalls of the inventors and the fliers.
Twenty-Three
There is a beat-up old photograph from when I was toddler, naked, covered head to toe in purple fingerpaint on the porch of the house I grew up in, caught in a moment of primal freedom and a shaft of yellow sepia sunlight. It may still exist, tucked away in my parents basement that they swear each year – ‘this will be the year, we will clean out the basement’, but each year the residue of decades climbs ever higher. Regardless, the picture persists in my memory, in the memory of my mom who took the photo on a disposable Instax camera, no doubt covered in flyaway purple speckles of animalistic joy.
I am now the age of my mother when she took the photo, tucked into the porch of the house they rented from my grandparents, three bedrooms, one sitting empty waiting for the baby growing in her stomach. This one planned, not like the feral creature embracing the mess of creation in front of her lens. I was made of whispered passion, cracked doors, reclined passenger seats, and sacrilegious unions under the opaque sky where god couldn’t see.
I am twenty-three. Purple paint cracked under fingernails, dried in clumps in my hair, staining my fingers and toes the color of – what was it? What was I painting?
I grew up, a child who kicked down the walls of every box, bursting forth in freckled limbs and big feelings and the desire to be oh so loved and understood and seen. See me and know me as I am art, I am created and creator, the paintbrush and the painting. Caught between the entrance and the exit, growing larger and larger, crown moulding splitting and tacky linoleum tile cracking under my tangled limbs in the kitchen, waiting for my turn to be heard, to be given the chance to speak in the conversation. To exist. Friendship bracelets styled in ropes, diaries with broke-back spines on car hoods waiting to dry in the sun, consecrated water spilling over lips trying to quench the thirst for the holy.
I couldn’t find it. The holy, the sacred, the purple paint swirling in archaic symbols as it swirled down the drain.
