1. You remember once , many years ago (before You met them) that red was the colour of love. It was the colour passion , of anger , so what else could love be?
You also remember , that when you thought this , you thought that all parents argued with the same ferocity of your parents did , and that you weren't meant to talk about what was wrong , that you had to let it fix itself.
You remember someone telling me that problems were like a broken bone. Sure , it can heal on its own , but will it ever be the same? You've gotta give it a little love and something to put it back in place , you've got to wrap it in a cast and keep it out of the water, then it can heal on its own. You told them that the cast would have to be red , because red was the colour of love and what else could fix something if not love.
Now you understand why your parents can't look each other in the eyes anymore and why they no longer live in the same house (it was never a home). You remember asking yourself if it was ever really love , if it was just over-ambitious lust that morphed into something that sorta blurred the lines between the two. You don't dwell on it for too long though , because now your mother's laughing again and when you look in the mirror you don't look as haunted as you used to be.
2. You believed then that the colour of love must have been blue. The water in the swimming pool was blue and your mother always wore these blue shoes that used gotten in one of her spending sprees. Because blue was the colour of your first notebook and your first poem was written in blue ink and you remember carving 'angel' into the bottom of s table and colouring it in blue because the girl that set next to you was just that. An angel.
You should have known she was not. Your angels had 6 , blind eyes , and rows , upon rows of lion teeth. Your angels were blazing and inky, with their halos made of burning fire and their wings made of raven feathers and pieces of black holes. Because you read a poem in which Micheal had cough syrup red wings and was sitting in a field of poppies and that's how you wanted to see all you angels from then on because their was something beautiful in vicious reverence.
You never told this girl how you felt because you were young and stupid ( your mother still called you baby ) and you'd heard names she'd been using anyways , there was no use in setting yourself up for hurt.
3. And when you thought that it had finally ended , you found him. He was beautiful in a scary way and scary in a beautiful way. And you thought that you'd finally found the colour of love , honey brown with wisps of green , like his eyes.
But this pretty boy wasn't scary for no reason , and you were still so young and you couldn't give any of yourself to him anyways so why try? Why set yourself up for failure? Why allow yourself to surrender to pain like that? And oh god , you were too young to feel this bad over silly childhood crushes , too bad to feel this horrible about having dreams where you could finally hold the blond girls hands , dreams where you could finally hold the honey-eyed boy and whisper "there is sunlight inside you somewhere". You wish you didn't feel this bad about staying up late and wondering why everything was so bad and why you held your best friends like you we're afraid that one day they would leave.
(You wonder if it's because that the honey-eyed boy was once your best friend until he fell in love with your best friend and left her because childhood was silly and this was all silly anyways)
And now , you've got your hands cradling your head and you don't want to think about anything ever again , you don't want to talk about anything ever again and your body ( your skin , your bones , your blood , your whole damn being ) feels like a straight jacket and you just want to get out , get out , get out , get-
You want to imagine what it would be like if you were sitting in the meadows with god where he could tell you the colour of love himself.
3. Because you look at them (all tan skin and black hair and a smile so bright it could only be described as sunflower golden ) and you realise that the colour of love is white.
Peace , simplicity , a new beginning. Because now , your god has given you a blank canvas and you want to paint all the colours of every love you'll ever be able to have with them because now your mother there no longer calls you baby and you can look into your mirror without feeling haunted.
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Loosely inspired by some of my own bouts of love.
