by Renuka Raghavan
Sapna wore the dress because Maa altered the seams and blue had always been to her a sensible color. It was the color of notebooks and municipal buses, of things meant to last through the day without drawing attention. In the hotel ballroom, the blue multiplied, a banner near the podium, the expansive carpet, the cool light pooling beneath chandeliers. She felt herself suddenly diluted.
Baba’s colleagues greeted her with practiced warmth, their voices rising and falling at all the right moments, as if following a script. She stood near the wall, aligning her shoulders with the wainscoting, watching Baba grow broader in his suit, his laughter purposeful. That was when she saw the woman wearing the same blue, deep and deliberate, but cut differently. Her fabric curved off her shoulder like a wave, caressing her body. The woman’s smile arrived and retreated, again and again, as if she was testing the room.
She found Sapna by accident near the dessert table. We match, the woman said, touching Sapna’s sleeve as if checking a seam. Sapna nodded. Blue to blue. It was childish, she knew, but the relief of sameness felt like finding shelter during sudden rain. They spoke of dresses and how blue was the most beautiful of pigments, the way it held onto light and memory. The woman laughed softly, and the sound settled in the Sapna’s chest.
Later, she saw her father’s glance cross the room, quick and weighted, finding the woman and asking her to dance. Sapna noticed the woman’s hands, steady, unafraid, as if they knew exactly where to rest. Her blue deepened. Sapna decided, at that moment, she hated the color. It was the color of police lights and disgusting cough medicine Maa measured into spoons. It was the color of bruises, like the one Maa got weeks ago when she asked Baba why his suit smelled of jasmine.
On the ride home, the city blurred. Sapna thought of blue as ink, how it seeps through pages, indelible stains that refuse correction, spreading, spreading, spreading even when the book is shut tight.
Renuka Raghavan, a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominee, writes short-form prose and poetry. She is the author of Out of the Blue (Big Table Publishing, 2017), The Face I Desire (Nixes Mate, 2019), and Nothing Resplendent Lives Here (Cervena Barva Press, 2022). For a complete list of her previous publications, visit her at: www.renukaraghavan.com
January House Literary Journal 
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