A LOVE FOR COLORFUL LOVE

01 - Duochromatic

Sarah used to only draw in black and white. She's drawn pictures since she was six. Never once in any of those images has she thrown the slightest hint of color. Well, that last sentence would be assuming that black and white are not colors. Sarah liked to think of black as the existence of all colors simultaneously, harmoniously living among one another. That's beautiful, isn't it?

It's not that Sarah lacked the resources to add color to her pictures. She held an arsenal of colorful weapons in her room, begging to be used. Blue cried out to be the beauty in a cloudless sky. Red yearned to be the blush of a first kiss at sunset. Yellow wanted so desperately to be that sun. Sarah, however, only saw the world in black and white. That's ultimately what the world is anyways, isn't it? A brilliant combination of blacks and whites and infinite shades in between?

Sarah wasn't the only one who saw the world that way. In fact, her entire town viewed the world that simply. A duo-chromatic paradigm for the future. Her father actually openly wished Sarah only saw white, though. And so, Sarah used the world that was available to her as inspiration for her drawings. Her art was a representation of the life that unfolded around her. She grabbed a pencil and put it to a canvas, creating art. Black. White. And sometimes gray, her favorite color.

The first drawing that Sarah ever made was of one of her old neighbors, Adu. He was a black boy that lived in the dilapidated house down the street. His parents brought him here from Nigeria. Real nice kid. Sarah's dad didn't like her being around him. Not unlike the other people in the neighborhood, he feared Sarah would be raped. Or beaten. Or raped and beaten. And killed.

Adu moved away after a house fire leveled the house. Everything was gone. No trace of life existed except for the crying child on the sidewalk, turned away by his neighbors. It was miraculous Adu made it out, really. Adu's parents died from smoke inhalation. Another black orphan in a cruel world of great white sharks. Tragic, isn't it?

Sarah doesn't know where Adu lives now. No one really does. All they know is that he doesn't love in that house anymore. It was rebuilt soon after it was burned down. Arson? Probably. The neighborhood carried on. Sarah drew it. Sarah drew it all. That was the day she vowed to never put blue against a paper. To never let red see her bedroom lights. Yellow would never breathe again.

But, Sarah decided that ideas and thoughts aren't permanent. They're transient beings bouncing around within your head. They're thunderstorms that elevate villages and destroy hurt. And like all thunderstorms, they dissipate.

Sarah got out her yellow marker as she watched the strange, black man of her age walk into the house built on the lot Adu used to live in.