Color

What's it like?

Monochrome, my world goes by in a blur of black and white. The sunset is a smear of muddy gray across the sky, and it's beautiful, but I know I'm missing something. I know there is more than this bland black and white world waiting for me. I hear whispers of color, told as though the world is the most beautiful place. People reach out for ocean waves, they say they are vibrant and amazing. They say they are never the same color, but rather ever changing, a range of hues changing as the day goes on, changing with the sunrise and sunset. A pool of blue-green, but I wouldn't know. I haven't seen the colors yet.

They say that once you meet your soulmate the world changes, and nothing ever looks the same, as long as you're by their side, that the love you will feel for this person is so powerful it changes how you view the world, it makes everything alluring. Everything turns into something called a color. A color is supposed to be something like a shade. Black and white isn't all there is, they have what they call warm colors and cold colors, but I don't understand why the color of something affects it's temperature. I don't know much, colors are a difficult subject so people don't like talking about them, and school doesn't teach them. My granny told me about them though. She said her favorite was one called blue, because it was the color of grandpa's eyes, it was the first color she saw. It was also the last. Grandpa died last year, after 47 years of being together, after 47 years of color, Granny's world is once again monochrome.

She tells me that sometimes she still see's the colors in her dreams; Granny dreams of Grandpa, and his blue eyes. She said they were deeper than the ocean, and somehow, they made her warm.

"What's it like," I asked her one day. "what makes them so great?"

"The colors, Andria, are everywhere, they are in everything, even you-"

"They can't be in me!" I interjected "I've always been this way." I gestured to my plain grayish hue.

"Oh but they are, you see your hair, it's the most brilliant shade of red, that's a warm color. It shines in the sun the most luminous hair I've ever seen. It's gorgeous."

"Well thank you Granny, but what does that mean? What does red look like? Why is it warm?"

"Let's see, how do you explain color to the unenlightened?" Granny often speaks to herself under her breath. "How about this, the fire in the fireplace is red, and remember when you were young and you burned yourself on the hot embers? Those are red as well, and the blister it left also started red."

"So red things are hot and painful?"

"Some are yes, but that soft fuzzy blanket you take to bed with you, that's actually a shade of red, red is warmth, and comfort as well as heat and pain. Red is used to express anger and frustration as well as love and desire. Every color represents a different emotion for each person, but for every emotion the one color represents to you, it will represent the opposite to someone else."

"Granny, how can such a thing exist? How can one color have a different meaning for everyone?"

"Everyone is unique, no two minds are ever the same, so the way we perceive color will vary, but the color itself will always remain the same. Now I think this is enough talk about colors for the night, it's getting late. Goodnight Andria, sweet dreams"

"Goodnight Granny, I hope you dream in color."