Three Circles of Cobalt
On my brother's voice
The moment my brother speaks, cobalt blue arrives.
Not pale blue. Not soft blue. Cobalt. Deep and saturated all the way through, the kind of blue that feels almost solid, almost something you could press your palm against and feel it press back. Cool to the touch. Certain. It has weight without heaviness, the way the presence of someone you trust has weight without heaviness.
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Three circles. Always three. Always different sizes.
One large, one medium, one small. While he is talking they move slowly, dancing around each other, drifting in and out of orbit the way things drift when they are entirely comfortable with where they are. The largest one leads without insisting. The smaller ones follow without disappearing. There is something in their arrangement that feels like family.
When he is calm the circles float with space between them. When something matters to him they draw closer, the blue deepening slightly, the edges sharpening. When he laughs the largest one expands first and the blue brightens from within, the way a room brightens when someone you love walks into it.
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Cobalt blue will always be my brother.
Not a color I see and think of him. A color that is him, the way certain things become so entirely associated with a person that they stop being separable. I cannot hear cobalt blue without hearing his voice. I cannot hear his voice without seeing it. Late at night, driving back from the airport, months of distance between us and neither of us saying so, he said I missed you and the three circles appeared instantly, fuller and deeper than I had ever seen them, pulsing once like a single breath and then settling into their slow orbit.
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When he stops speaking the color stops with him.
Not gradually. The circles slow as his voice slows and when the last word leaves the air they release. The cobalt thins at the edges, the three circles softening, drifting apart, the blue fading the way his voice fades when a room goes quiet after he has been in it.
And then they are gone.
Until he speaks again.
Adrian Adair