Your world is pink;
(pink is for love).
Pink is for the bashful blush that stains
your cheeks,
for careful lip gloss that glistens in the sun.
Pink is for the sound of your laughter –
fake and real at the same time –
as you toss your head back and pretend.
Pink is for the way you wobble as the earth moves and sways you back and forth,
grounding you in toxic fog.
Pink is for the way you can’t see,
but you think you know where you’re
going anyway.
Pink is for the way you kiss – eyes closed, hands grasping;
you’re a water-breather, all gills and
sharpened talons.
Pink is for the dying sun in the corner of your eye,
and for the doomed moths lunging,
laboring,
in love with its deadly glare.

Your world is blue;
(blue is for despair).
Blue is for the cruel glints of cold eyes,
for the harsh twists of hard mouths.
Blue is for the ice, freezing life in
glass sheets
while fish gasp at hollows in the lake.
Blue is for the foolish spider trapped in
his own silken strands,
and for your peeling papier-mâché
exoskeleton with its futile ribbons of glue.
Blue is for the velvet sky
decorated with splaying white pigeons
clawing berry eyes.
Blue is for the antler chandelier that drips long ice daggers,
and for the tundra blanket that hides the
fat red fox
curling his tail around elegant gloved paws
far from his blood-drenched muzzle.
Blue is for the hardened skin of the
dying rhino
drying alone in the orange desert,
brittle breathing,
brittle hide,
unknown and unacknowledged amongst
the folded banks of sand.

You are tired:
tired of the bridle hanging
without the horse and without the rider.
Tired of the dog barking
without the leash and without the master.
Rainbows have made your nose bleed,
your throat raw,
and now all you want is white.
You think:
“white snow, white stag, white shadow, white me”
to the ghostly wind around your
unscarved neck
to the yellow streetlights and the dim
crescent moon.
You forget
that color is just
dispersed white.
Reflected light.
Somewhere else, the fog lifts.