ROY G BIV

Sienna C

Part I: Wisdom

Purple, pink, brown and red

I cannot risk going to bed

White, black, grey, and yellow

You can find me, if you bellow

Black, white, yellow, and grey

I can't wait another day

Pink, purple, red, and brown

You can try to leave this town

Part II: Strength

My yellow- no mustard- sweatpants turned into grey limbs. Mustard legs swapped for grey pumas. Why do I dislike bright red? I'm going to use that bright red pen, or that red notebook. My shoes went from brown-orange-blue paisley to coal and olives. My love for colour will never fade but will wait another rainy day.

I would wear orange to be heard and green to be felt. But seen? Leave it to monochromatic days; days or people, depending on how you paint on the threads or mix up the paint. We used to have the same favourite colour but now we check in with each other to ask what changed. Fluoro- purple seems out of place but when I find it in the natural sanctuaries, it feels right. I keep forgetting if she's dark blue or green. But we can exchange tinges again, when the weaving takes place.

I was travelling in a pack of puffy black and grey masses, swirling and squishing onto stairways, down to sooty subway mice, and “standing behind the yellow line at all times”. We load onto buses with phosphorescent eyes.

I see neon orange towering, still lowering their eyes. I see inky hat and graphite eyes, sister with a muddy blue backpack. Wade on, stay put until grey legs aplenty pile off. What's left is patchy maroon-green-blue-orange auras, plundering across the frosted asphalt.

Peaking behind shadowed bangs, eyes meet yellow gently hunched; deep sun sweater and rectangle eyes, then curved over again. Perplexed or bemused- is that the same hue? He responds in a different muddy blue.

Eyes meet steely white and fluffy silver, clunky paws, treading violently.

Eyes meet dark drops dissipating: one sketched and lean eggplant purple, one a toe-tapping, hand-bopping red race car.

Eyes meet towering golden slumbers and navy slouches.

Eyes meet lavender and green apple trying too hard to let the other be liked more.

I'll stick with blue, as they seem to dilute to anyone’s needs, like sticky putty or a welcome mat at your best friend's house, the one you never noticed.  One cat was red, out of seven. The sun was opalescent. And eyes met doorbell, met grass stains, met real food and real love.

We will always retell our colours, not because they will wash away, but because they can fade from overuse. And overuse may not be the cause either. Just a transference, a presence so bright and dense that we've catergorized it as dull. There's no way to mix your internal colours, and there's no way to stop the colours around you from mixing.

The rainbow is really a full circle, so is your cycle within the cycle of others.

You cannot colour in or outside the lines, if you haven't drawn them yourself.

Part III: Beauty

The beautiful purple triad, gleams then

disperses

A cupful of hopes and muddy green

collapses

The clouds bunch tightly to hide and

evaporate

into a void where no colour exists

dare not to